Analysis Of The Body In Pain By Elaine Scarry

In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry argues, “Physical pain has no voice, but when it at last finds a voice, it begins to tell a story” (3). Scarry’s argument highlights two important notions – the difficulties of elucidating unimaginable pain, and its ability to unravel through narration, both of which are exemplified in Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “The Fish”. Centered on an anonymous speaker’s three-fold experience of catching, analyzing and unexpectedly releasing a fish back into the ocean, Bishop’s poem skillfully evokes the titled fish’s suffering by taking on the subject of pain visually. She moves from observing the fish’s external features to its physiological features, and ultimately to its soul. Although the speaker initially sees the

As Scarry succinctly summarizes, “physical pain is exceptional…for being the only one that has no object…this objectlessness, the complete absence of referential context, almost prevents it from being rendered in language” (Scarry 161). In other words, because physical pain has no ‘voice’ and is directly linked to one’s personal five senses, the suffering of another other is often remote and intangible. While the gerund “imagining” connotes an action, to fully perceive another person’s suffering requires a reference point that can conjure the sentiments of pain; it is difficult to imagine without imagining

Because literature propels imagination by linking readers to its speakers or characters, “the overall strategy of these writings is first to make something and then let it, in ‘its own words’, reveal itself to you” (Scarry 181). Scarry’s theory suggests that by taking pain as a subject of its own, literature can allow it to enter a shared discourse through language. Although Bishop’s poem is presented in a first person narration, her employment of an anonymous speaker plays a critical role in linking the reader to the speaker. Throughout the poem, little is revealed about the speaker’s identity or setting besides the fact that she is fishing at sea on a “little rented boat” (67). No knowledge is provided about the weather, time or even location that the fishing is taking place. By retaining the speaker’s anonymity and restraining background information, Bishop effectively renders the subjective experience in a relatable and imaginable manner. Readers are aligned and plunged into the intimate consciousness of the speaker where what she sees and feels are illuminated with better proximity and clarity. The poem also achieves a sort of ‘timelessness’ by freezing the speaker’s encounter she has with the fish and preserving the account that can not