Diction And Imagery In The Fish By Elizabeth Bishop

The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop, is a story about a fisherman and the fish he catches. Throughout the whole poem, Bishop uses diction and imagery to capture the image of the poem and express the meaning behind it. In the beginning, she described how she caught the fish, and really started reflecting on it. At first, She was proud for her victory over the fish, but the realized it was a wrong thing to do. Bishop shifts from seeing the fish as food, to something else beautiful. Her attitude towards the fish has changed throughout the poem. “He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely.” This was the first detail Bishop described about the fish that also begins the first change of attitude as seeing the fish as a human. Bishop used “he” to refer to the fish instead of “it” or “the fish”, to show how the speaker sees the fish with humanity. He is struggling, he has endured suffering, but he is very much respected by the fisherman. Within this sentence, Bishop also calls the fish “homely”, meaning unattractive. Moving on, Bishop begins her first imagery of the fish. …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.” Bishop starts to add more colors into the picture, instead of just brown. The imagery of this sentences added with the imagery from before, creates something view of the fish to the audience. Which shows how the fisherman starts to admire the fish and care about it more. The speaker uses more positive manners and diction to support the his/her relationship with the fish, and further in creating imagery. At this point, the fisherman has described the fish as beautiful, and the fisherman is starting to wonder if he/she should still capture