For an extra credit assignment we have been asked to compare the poem "The Fish" by Bishop with the short story "The Bear" by Faulkner. More then just comparing, but to illustrate the parallel meaning between Liza's comment about the fish wearing medallions and having fought for its life, but not fighting anymore as caught in the poem with the story of "The Bear". First of all, I would like to say that reading this short story by Faulkner was quite an effort. I have to say that I didn't care for Faulkner's style of writing with the many commas and overly abundant conjunctions that led to never ending sentences. The main story of the bear was rather intriguing, but Faulkner goes into detail over a background of slavery and black history for a good bit of the story. As he goes into detail, myself, I felt as if I was going into a comma. I had to really struggle to finish this short story because of that detail. Comparing the two works of literature I have to say that they not only have an overall same meaning behind them, but also have two entirely different aspects of that same issue. Just like the fish, the bear had survived numerous threats to his life and they both had medals of triumph. The fish wore 5 hooks to show what he had overcome, while the bear had 52 bullets that represented all of his victories. Both animals were considered more then just a fish and a bear, but personified with human qualities of nobility that turn the animals into something more. In the poem "The Fish" the narrator feels a sense of sympathy for the fish because of all it has lived through and it does not even fight back when she captures it, so she throws the fish back to let it live for another day. In the short story, Ike and Sam are also given the chance to kill the bear, but instead neither of them shoots. Ilk says, "the killing won't happen until the last day, whenever he do...