My father still goes fishing, the only thing that seems to calm him. the mountains are sleeping waves. my father catches very small fish. my mother eats them. my friends laugh at me, when i tell them that once upon a time, my father caught a carp weighing twenty pounds. in this excerpt from wang's "the carp," the carp represents the loss of innocence, promise of a new start, ambition of a man, demise of mankind.