Fish as Symbols for the Acceptance of Reality in 'A Visit from the Goon Squad' Lena Geller College

At first, references to fish in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad seem fleeting and insignificant. Fish appear to serve as nothing more than dinner for Lou’s family or an odd prop for Scotty to carry around. Upon further investigation, however, it grows apparent that the various fish references dispersed throughout the book are not random, but actually connected and loaded with meaning. Egan unifies multiple narratives in A Visit From The Goon Squad by employing fish as a symbol of reality, using them to reveal the difficulty and importance of accepting actuality.

Fish references immediately precede several instances where characters discover a hidden truth. Ted describes “letting the caffeine and vodka greet in his brain like fighting fish” (Egan 227) right before he finds Sasha living in a brothel, and Rob mentions “a couple of toothless geezers fishing under the Williamsburg Bridge” (Egan 204) shortly before divulging to Drew that Sasha lived in Naples as a “‘hooker and a thief’” (Egan 204). Similarly, in Africa, Lou and Rolph go fishing right before Rolph reveals Mindy’s affair with Albert. The repeated pairings of fish references with revelations unite three different narratives as well as strengthen the...