Billy Gould is a fish, and this all makes sense.

If you asked me to summarize the ending to you I think that I would have to get back to you in a few days to review what just happened. Instead I believe that I have come to understand what has happened to Billy Gould through our conversations in class and my own personal reading. His “transformation” is his final escape from the reality that he is presently in. Gould states “ I like my fellow fish. They do not whinge about small matters of no import, do not express guild for their actions, nor do they seek to convey the diseases of kneeling to others, or of getting ahead, or of owning things (398).” Gould is disgusted by humanity, and the way that he is treated within the prison system. I believe Gould understand that he must be punished within the prison system, but not tortured like he has been for so long. Saying that the only pure type of life on earth is that of animals, specifically fish, that are “honest & without evil (398).” Gould goes on to tell us all the things that were wrong with him when he was once human, and how empty his experience for life was at the time (398-401). Gould finds comfort into the reality that the fish had brought him, and they seemed to have provided him with some sort of religious experience. As if being baptized by Christ Gould states “I opened myself up to everything. The more I felt & the more I poured that feeling into my fish, the more feeling I saw all around me (399).” His mind made the fish that he drew more than a coping mechanism, but a deity in which to make your life more like. With all that was happening in Gould’s reality he only saw humanity exerting “pain, sadness, and hopeless love” in prison. Gould became the fish, or “converted into the fish, because in his reality fish were the purest thing. Gould “Drowned attempting escape (404),” but I believe that his attempted escape was made in order to reach his metaphorical “heaven” among the most divine part of this reality: THE BOOK OF FISH. We figure out that several characters in this novel are all the same person (404), and that reality that we thought the book was in is completely false. We are only given a clear vision as to what makes Gould happy (the lives of the fish), and I believe that Flanagan is telling the reader that our state of reality doesn’t really matter as long as we find happiness.