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Essay / Portrayal of Oppression in Bishop's poem, The Fish
In our modern American society, oppression is something that still exists and has been detrimental to people, harming their lives. The process of fishing can symbolize how ordinary people fight against the clutches of oppression that they cannot control. For many people, opportunities can be very few and far between. Through Bishop's depiction of fishing, she uses powerful visual and kinesthetic imagery, creative metaphors, and lengthy stanzas to show the claws of oppression. Bishop also manipulates the diction of the words to make the fish look good, but it doesn't. Throughout this poem, Elizabeth Bishop uses extreme imagery about how fishing works. With these images we can get a good idea of what oppression can do to the ordinary person in society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay When there is oppression and a lack of opportunity in someone's life, it can be paralyzing and cause despair. Despair can be a metaphor for what happens when a hook snags in a fish's mouth. “He didn’t fight/He didn’t fight at all.” /He was a grunting weight/beaten and vulnerable/and simple” (Bishop, 767). When a fish is hooked, there is very little chance of escape. If the fish attempts to escape the hook, the pain is extreme and the chances of escaping the hook become unlikely. So the moment the fish was pulled into the boat, despair engulfed his thought process. That's why when Bishop hauls the fish up the side of the boat, it hangs there. When someone goes through the depths of oppression, they feel like they are giving up because there is no escape. When Bishop describes the fish, she uses very deep imagery in her language that paints a very detailed picture of the fish. Bishop notes, “While his gills breathed the terrible oxygen/-the fearful gills/fresh and crisp with blood/that can cut so badly” (Bishop, 767). The way she describes this fish is very vivid and has a negative connotation. The fish's gills were "fresh and crispy with blood/that can cut so badly", showing that the fish could be injured in the process of reeling the fish. This line alone gives a very powerful and negative image of the fish. If you were to read this line as a description of the fish, you would probably think it was a killer fish. However, it's just a normal fish that was stabbed with a fishing hook. So from these lines, this is what caught the attention when the description of the fish came into play. Throughout the poem, Bishop uses changes in diction to describe the fish, which can give different meanings of what the fish looks like. Bishop explains: “It was spotted with barnacles/fine rosettes of lime/and infested/with tiny white sea lice/and under it two or three rags of green grass were hanging down. » It is interesting how Bishop describes the outward appearance of the fish. When she first refers to the coating of barnacles on the fish, she uses the word "speckled" to describe the coating of barnacles. Barnacles are a crustacean that attaches itself to the outer covering of a fish and feeds on the water. They're a parasite that lives in the ocean, so they're not pretty in any way. The word speckled is often used to describe something that might be "pretty." People may use the word speckle if they are talking about a pretty pattern ofcolors. In this case we are talking about a coarse crustacean that lives on the skin of fish and feeds on them. It's also very interesting how she uses "fine rosettes of lime" to describe what was on the fish. The way it's worded, it seems like something elegant or clean is hanging from it. But, from the fish's point of view, it could be a water lily or a clump of weeds clinging to the fish, which would not have been considered a "fine rosette." In the face of evil, the oppressor can have final power over life and death. Here, Bishop is in this threshold of power with the fish. McFarland points out: “Death is on the edge of Bishop's poem, if only because the speaker has the power of life or death over the fish” (McFarland, 1982). Bishop may consider the capture a victory, but in this situation it is the deciding factor between life or death. From the details of the fish, it already appears to be a battered fish. Bishop describes: "-if you could call it a lip-/dark, wet and weapon like/ hung five pieces of old fish line/ or four and a wire leader/ with the swivel still attached/ with their five large hooks/ grew firmly in his mouth” (Bishop, 768). This fish has already been fooled many times by the fishing process. The fisherman baits the hook so that the fish thinks it is food. This often happens at the beginning of oppression, empty promises can lead to damage in the end. This fish had five large hooks already stuck in its mouth from other incidents. In this poem, Bishop dives so deep into the metaphors about the fish that she loses grip on the reality of the fish. In "The Fish", Bishops experiences a great sense of joy upon catching this fish. Throughout her poem, she uses very provocative metaphors to evoke the beauty of fish. But, sometimes in the poem, his diction for the description of the fish moves away from the reality of it. Doty points out: “People drift away from the story they are experiencing all the time; everyday life is filled with small moments of rupture, disappearance and interiority. But sometimes these experiences are more lasting and deeper. The woman in the boat holding her catch floated out of causality; his encounter with otherness restructures his sense of the world” (Doty, 2010). For the most part, the fish was not a beautiful creature. From the beginning of the poem, she says that she caught a “huge fish.” From this sentence, you might believe that the fish Bishop caught was a nice catch that belonged on the wall. Bishop moved from describing in detail the exterior of the fish, then the interior of the fish, and back to the exterior again (Doty, 2010). By doing this, the format of the poem was very short lines but all grouped into one giant stanza. By formatting the poem this way, a story is told through these short lines. Bishop uses the strategy of a long stanza to create a build-up to the climax of the story, in order to keep the reader engaged. She uses short, powerful sentences to really try to persuade you that this fish is amazing. Catron states: “Bishop conveys this empathy to the reader through dense and demanding descriptive sentences, filled with similes and metaphors” (Catron, 2002). Bishop builds the story throughout this poem about the beauty of the fish. When you read the poem at the beginning, you get the feeling of rising action, as if there will be a big climax at the end of the work. The deeper she delved into the fish's physical problems, the more guilty she seemed to feel. “Ashamed and horrified by the. 2017