"The Fish" by: Elizabeth Bishop * The Theme of 'True' Beauty or 'Inner' Beauty: Neither her battered boat nor the "venerable" old fish is beautiful in conventional terms. Their beauty lies in having survived, & when the speaker realizes this, "victory filled up / the little rented boat" & she understands that "everything / was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!" That is when she lets the fish return to his home in the water. The fish helps Bishop …showed first 75 words of 378 total…

…showed last 75 words of 378 total…the fish because she realizes he has eluded other anglers. The ultimate respect is expressed w/ the fish's release. Bishop knows the fish "...can't be kept, but must be let go" (McCabe). Bishop recognizes that she will be able to hold the moment closer as a memory than by keeping the fish as a trophy. The real theme of Bishop's poem is that of humanitarianism & respect for a fish's lifelong will to survive.