Creating a bond between a fish and the reader is a hard feat to do, but Elizabeth Bishop has done just that. Elizabeth Bishop creates a deeper layer of the story "The Fish" by her intentional word choice and colorful descriptions. She uses her way with words to describe in detail what the fish looks like and what it does when captured. She has used a large variety of literary devices and word choice to bring forth a deeper meaning of what is actually going on, and this is how she creates a bond between a fish and the reader. Bishop's use of imagery, narration, and tone allows the reader to envision the fish and create a bond with him.
The first line of the work is that a "tremendous fish" was captured which starts the first of the descriptive …show more content…
"He was speckled with barnacles,/ fine rosettes of lime,/ and infested/ with tiny white sea-lice,/ and underneath two or three/ rags of green weed hung down." When Bishop begins to create what the fish looks like in the reader's mind, the only idea is that the fish is extremely old, now for the first lines the reader thinks that the fish is okay but when the word "infested" comes up this immediately turns the whole visual idea around. "While his gills were breathing in/ the terrible oxygen/ - the frightening gills,/ fresh and crisp with blood,/ that can cut so badly- / I thought of the coarse white flesh/ packed in like feathers. " When the reader is thinking about the fish, they are now thinking about how he is struggling to breathe because of the "terrible oxygen." The phrase, "the frightening gills" creates a bad view of the gills that would be considered good for a fish, thus producing a powerful visual with just a small amount of words. Bishop uses passionate wording when describing the skin of the fish, "…the coarse white flesh/ packed in like feathers." How she uses the wording intensifies the reader's view of the fish, and creates a visual in the reader's mind about how the fish is looking at that moment. The author wants the reader to have a deep understanding of each part of the fish to realize what the fish
The first line of the work is that a "tremendous fish" was captured which starts the first of the descriptive …show more content…
"He was speckled with barnacles,/ fine rosettes of lime,/ and infested/ with tiny white sea-lice,/ and underneath two or three/ rags of green weed hung down." When Bishop begins to create what the fish looks like in the reader's mind, the only idea is that the fish is extremely old, now for the first lines the reader thinks that the fish is okay but when the word "infested" comes up this immediately turns the whole visual idea around. "While his gills were breathing in/ the terrible oxygen/ - the frightening gills,/ fresh and crisp with blood,/ that can cut so badly- / I thought of the coarse white flesh/ packed in like feathers. " When the reader is thinking about the fish, they are now thinking about how he is struggling to breathe because of the "terrible oxygen." The phrase, "the frightening gills" creates a bad view of the gills that would be considered good for a fish, thus producing a powerful visual with just a small amount of words. Bishop uses passionate wording when describing the skin of the fish, "…the coarse white flesh/ packed in like feathers." How she uses the wording intensifies the reader's view of the fish, and creates a visual in the reader's mind about how the fish is looking at that moment. The author wants the reader to have a deep understanding of each part of the fish to realize what the fish