Letting Go: Elizabeth Bishop's Father Fish - Essay Example

the very beginning, the reader is met head-on with simple imagery: "I caught a tremendous fish/and held him beside the boat/half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth." Nothing could be more straight-forward and simple. She caught a fish! But within this one sentence, we know two things: Bishop has transformed herself into a fisherman (which brings up religious imagery, as Jesus spoke of catching fish with his disciples, and turning one fish into many). Additionally, Bishop refers to the fish as "he," a masculine connotation, which transforms the fish from an "it," something apart from us, to a "he," a person who shares our humanity and fragility.

Within the first few lines, she builds sympathy for "him," and personifies the fish into a masculine, sympathetic figure, which is likely her own father or some other older male figure who impacted her life. As the poem progresses, the reader gets the feeling that rather than sitting on a boat in the middle of an ocean, Bishop is sitting next to her her father, as he has entered that phase of life where one gives in to the tugs of life and the human survival instinct, and finally submits to the realization that it is time, that death awaits us all.

She notes that "He didn't fight./He hadn't fought at all./He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely." These words are surprising in a fish, that usually, when they are caught, they put up a tremendous fight, fighting for life and survival. For a fish not to fight at all--weary and tired of fighting, perhaps--is important in that she notes that her own father had given up with the constant struggle for life and had submitted himself to whatever would happen next. The fight for life had simply gone in the old man.

It was time. What follows next. Letting Go: Elizabeth Bishop's Father Fish Perhaps the most difficult thing one can do in life is to let go of someone they love. In her poem, "The Fish," Bishop transforms one of the most routine occurrences--the catching of a fish--into a piece that examines and celebrates the life well-lived, but also addresses the process of letting go of a loved one, surrendering them to a life beyond our perception and cognizance. Written in exquisite detail, the poem, on its surface, describes the catching of a fish, and the ultimate return of the old fish back into the water, but Bishop has more in store for the reader than a simple descriptive piece about a fish.

WIth recurring imagery which beckons the struggle for life that all creatures have, and the constant battle all people face (over and over again in our minds) with death, Bishop is able to transform this event into a larger, more internal examination of the human struggle between life, death, and the ultimate requirement that we let go of our loved ones as they, too, struggle into their next phase of existence. For Bishop, and the reader, the freeing of the fish releases all of us from the struggle we have with life and death within us.

It is a recognition of the value of life, of her father's life, and her own desire to hold on to the known life. It is this internal focus of her existence as it is influenced by those whom she loves which allows Bishop to stand out as truly one of the most honest and provocative poets of her generation.