Secret Goldfish
Through the Eyes of a Fish David Mean’s short story “The Secret Goldfish” compares the unpredictable and constantly changing nature of human life to the ups and downs of the fish’s life inside the aquarium. Mean utilizes the symbols of the aquarium and the fish to show us reality, unpredictable and transient, and the outright will to live which guides drives us onward. The fish tank is a symbol of the ebb and flow between good and bad times. The fish’s existence which relies solely on the owner 's hand is predictable only by the constancy of the protagonists’ marriage. When the marriage is stable the aquarium is clean, the fish is well fed and happy “wondrously free, swimming – for all he knew – in Lake Superior… free of desires, needs, and everything else” (218). This clean state represents the favorable parts of life. When the marriage become unstable the opposite happens, the aquarium became a filthy mess, “the water so clotted it had become a substantial mass, a putty within the fish was presumably swimming, or dead” (215). The dirty stage symbolizes the base facets of life; the water is restricted, dark, and full of need. The fish tank is a representation of the ephemeral nature of life and the good and bad times we all face in our own lives. The goldfish experiences symbolize the joy and misery of life; his strong will to live in the face of suffering and in doing so symbolizes our own personal struggles in the face of uncertainty. When the tank is clean Fish swam “jauntily… delighted, moving professionally, wagging his back fin” (219). Unfortunately more often than not the tank conditions are deplorable. Incredibly, even in the face of certain death the goldfish hangs on to life with every last ounce of energy “holding his life close to the gills, subdued by the dark unwilling to part with his cellular activities” (221). Time and time again the fish displays an incredible determination to live even though his future remains uncertain. The
Cited: Means, David. "The Secret Goldfish”. Approaching Literature: Reading + Thinking + Writing. Ed. Peter Schakel and Jack Ridl. 3rd Ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 215-22. Print.