For a moment, the narrator shifted his attention from the vessel to the vessel he was using. It was aged and beaten with oil that dripped into the lake, forming a rainbow when it came into contact with the water (Bishop 464). Bishop uses the image of the rainbow as it is viewed by most, if not all audiences, as a symbol of hope for the future. Belief in the rainbow as a sign of hope for a better future can be traced back to biblical times, when God sent a rainbow as a sign to Noah that the floods that occurred after forty days and nights of rain were over. The rainbow, therefore, symbolized that the fish would no longer suffer under the narrator's hands, since it is at this point that she decided to free him (Bishop