The carp illustrate the bond that the teachers and students
had with the father of the narrator, and emphasis that they bet him to near
death without taking into consideration how close they all were in the past.
The father of the narrator was the school principal; he
caught a 21-pound carp the day the narrator, his son, born, and he shared that
carp with all the teachers and boarding students. Therefore, the author, Yun Wang, used the carp as a symbol of the close bond the principal had with the ones that beat him.
