Fish Lamb Character Analysis

Fish will remember. All his life and all his next life he’ll remember this dark, cool plunge where sound and light and shape are gone, where something rushes him from afar, where, openmouthed, openfisted, he drinks in river, whales it in with complete surprise.

She wondered if it wasn’t really the way things were, everything just happening by chance in this sorry world. That knife spinning. She thought about her poor dead brother and the ashes and bones of her mother and sister, of Fish, the farm and every other bad turn that led to this night in a strange street and a makeshift kitchen.

The sky, packed with stars, rests just above his head, and when Quick looks over the side he sees the river is full of sky as well. There’s stars and swirl and space down there and it’s not water anymore—it doesn’t even feel wet. Quick stabs his fingers in. There’s nothing there. There’s no lights ashore now. No, there’s no shore at all, not that he can see. There’s only sky out there, above and below, everywhere to be seen. Except for Fish’s giggling, there’s no sound at all.

How you longed, how you stared at me those thundery nights when we all tossed and the house refused to sleep. It’s gone for you now, but for me the water backs into itself, comes around, joins up in the great, wide, vibrating space where everything that was and will be still is. For me, for all of us sooner or later, all of it will always be. And some of you will be forever watching me on the landing.

Every important thing that happened to him, it seemed, had to do with a river. It was insistent, quietly forceful like the force of his own blood. Sometimes he thought of it as the land’s blood: it roiled with life and living. But at other moments, when a dead sheep floated past, when the water was pink with storm mud, when jellyfish blew up against the beaches in great stinking piles, Quick wondered if it was the land’s sewer. The city had begun to pile up over it as the old buildings went and the ugly towers grew. But it resisted, all the same, having life, giving life, reflecting it.

I’m behind the mirror and in different spaces, I’m long gone and long here but there’s nothing I can do to stop this. Every time it happens, on and on in memory, I flinch as that brow flinches with the cool barrel suddenly upon it. The sound goes on and on and matter flies like the constellations through the great gaps in the heavens, and I haven’t stopped it again.

I’m a man for that long, I feel my manhood, I recognize myself whole and human, know my story for just that long, long enough to see how we’ve come, how we’ve all battled in the same corridor that time makes for us, and I’m Fish Lamb for those seconds it takes to die, as long as it takes to drink the river, as long as it took to tell you all this, and then my walls are tipping and I burst into the moon, sun and stars of who I really am. Being Fish Lamb. Perfectly. Always. Everyplace. Me.

Fish will remember. All his life and all his next life he’ll remember this dark, cool plunge where sound and light and shape are gone, where something rushes him from afar, where, openmouthed, openfisted, he drinks in river, whales it in with complete surprise.

She wondered if it wasn’t really the way things were, everything just happening by chance in this sorry world. That knife spinning. She thought about her poor dead brother and the ashes and bones of her mother and sister, of Fish, the farm and every other bad turn that led to this night in a strange street and a makeshift kitchen.

The sky, packed with stars, rests just above his head, and when Quick looks over the side he sees the river is full of sky as well. There’s stars and swirl and space down there and it’s not water anymore—it doesn’t even feel wet. Quick stabs his fingers in. There’s nothing there. There’s no lights ashore now. No, there’s no shore at all, not that he can see. There’s only sky out there, above and below, everywhere to be seen. Except for Fish’s giggling, there’s no sound at all.

How you longed, how you stared at me those thundery nights when we all tossed and the house refused to sleep. It’s gone for you now, but for me the water backs into itself, comes around, joins up in the great, wide, vibrating space where everything that was and will be still is. For me, for all of us sooner or later, all of it will always be. And some of you will be forever watching me on the landing.

Every important thing that happened to him, it seemed, had to do with a river. It was insistent, quietly forceful like the force of his own blood. Sometimes he thought of it as the land’s blood: it roiled with life and living. But at other moments, when a dead sheep floated past, when the water was pink with storm mud, when jellyfish blew up against the beaches in great stinking piles, Quick wondered if it was the land’s sewer. The city had begun to pile up over it as the old buildings went and the ugly towers grew. But it resisted, all the same, having life, giving life, reflecting it.

I’m behind the mirror and in different spaces, I’m long gone and long here but there’s nothing I can do to stop this. Every time it happens, on and on in memory, I flinch as that brow flinches with the cool barrel suddenly upon it. The sound goes on and on and matter flies like the constellations through the great gaps in the heavens, and I haven’t stopped it again.

I’m a man for that long, I feel my manhood, I recognize myself whole and human, know my story for just that long, long enough to see how we’ve come, how we’ve all battled in the same corridor that time makes for us, and I’m Fish Lamb for those seconds it takes to die, as long as it takes to drink the river, as long as it took to tell you all this, and then my walls are tipping and I burst into the moon, sun and stars of who I really am. Being Fish Lamb. Perfectly. Always. Everyplace. Me.