The theme of At The Fishhouses

Based on the dominant images, diction, and detail in “At the Fishhouses,” by Elizabeth Bishop, the theme of the poem is that people easily find beauty and symbolism in things that are “translucent” and easy to understand, but usually have difficulties coming to terms with and understanding things that are “opaque” and difficult to comprehend. The imagery in “At the Fishhouses” portrays a rugged, hardworking environment where “an old man sits netting” at twilight, and where “the air smells so strong of codfish it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.” The fishhouses themselves have “an emerald moss growing on their shoreward walls,” and the tools the fisherman use are “ancient,” have “melancholy stains, like dried blood,” and “the ironwork has rusted.” But among these seemingly callous things, the speaker finds beauty. The scale covered wheelbarrow is described as “plastered with creamy iridescent mail, with small iridescent flies crawling on them.” The speaker indicates that her grandfather has friends there, which may be why the fishhouses are a source of so much beauty for the speaker, and why the fisherman’s lifestyle is so easy for the narrator to understand. The speaker also demonstrates through imagery the connection between the sea and the fisherman, and therefore, knowledge and everyday life. The speaker of “At The Fishhouses” shows clearly her difficulty at coming to terms with her own experiences outside of the fishhouses, and the perplexity of the sea.
The diction of the poem was the key to readers to being able to connect with the poem. The speaker’s sudden switch from referring to her own personal experiences to referring to the reader directly pulls the reader in to the lines “If you should dip your hand in, your wrist would ache immediately, your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn as if the water was a transmutation of fire.” This abrupt change in diction demonstrates exactly what the speaker wants the reader to notice. Overall, the use of everyday language mixed in with a few words, such as opaque and translucent, is the speaker’s way of getting the reader to notice important phrases and hidden meanings.

At The Fishhouses literary devices

The two most important literary devices in “At the Fishhouses,” by Elizabeth Bishop, are ambiguity and imagery. The ambiguity of the words opaque and translucent in “All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea, swelling slowly as if considering spilling over, is opaque, but the silver of the benches, the lobster pots, and masts, scattered among the wild jagged rocks, is of an apparent translucence, like the small old buildings with an emerald moss growing on their shoreward walls.,” (Bishop lines 13-20) is the reason ambiguity is a central key of fully understanding the poem. If the reader didn’t know the denotative meaning of the two words, the theme of the poem would be lost to them. But by understanding the ambiguous form of the words, the reader understands the message the speaker is trying to convey. Another small form of an ambiguous word in the poem, “At the Fishhouses,” is “and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered with creamy iridescent coats of mail” (Bishop lines 23-25). The denotative meaning of the word “mail” is a flexible armor made of interlinked metal rings, which the speaker used to display the scales as armor. Once again, if the reader did not know the full meaning of the word, they would miss the symbolism.
The extensive use of imagery in the poem demonstrates the speaker’s felt distinction between the opaque and the translucent. In almost every line of “At the Fishhouses,” something is being described. From “it is a cold evening” (Bishop line 1), at the beginning of the poem, to “dark, salt, moving, utterly free” (Bishop line 79) at the end, the narrator uses descriptive words to show the contrast between the fishhouses and the rest of the world around her. The scales, “the principal beauty” (Bishop line 38), appear everywhere in the mind of the narrator, and symbolize the translucence she associates with the fishhouses. The sea, described with an oxymoron, “cold dark deep and absolutely clear” (Bishop 60), symbolizes the resemblance between it, and knowledge. The use of imagery clearly demonstrates the speaker’s struggle to understand the sea in relation to the fishhouses, and symbolically, the relation of everyday life to knowledge.

"At the Fishhouses"

At the Fishhouses
Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
ad narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown