My own personal recommendation would be that you go for
the golden carp rather than water, as it is a much bigger and more important symbol with
plenty of quotations that you can pick out to support your argument. The way in which
the golden carp symbolically represents a rival religious belief separate from
Catholicism is vital to Antonio's rising conflict between the received religious faith
of his mother and his understanding and acceptance of a different way of understanding
life and the divine, and is linked to the way in which the novel suggests every religion
offers equally valid but different approaches to living and understanding who we are the
world we live in. Antonio's acceptance of the golden carp later on in the novel
represents his own understanding of how we are able to turn to all available sources in
our efforts to establish our own sense of identity and finding our own place in life,
even if these sources at first appear to be contradictory. Note how the golden carp is
first presented:
The orange of the golden carp appeared at the
edge of the pond... We watched in silence at the beauty and grandeur of the great fish.
Out of the corners of my eyes I saw Cico hold his hand to his breast as the golden carp
glided by. Then with a switch of his powerful tail the golden carp disappeared into the
shadowy water under the
thicket.
This
quotation comes from Chapter 11 and is Antonio's first sighting of the golden carp. The
"beauty and grandeur" of the fish stresses its divine nature, as does Cico's act of
worship by holding his hand to his breast. This confrontation is significant because it
represents Antonio's first meeting with a rival belief and religion and leads to his
final realisation in Chapter 22 that he is not forced to choose between the rival
conflicts that threaten to rip him apart, but that he can "Take the llano and the river
valley, the moon and the sea, God and the golden carp--and make something
new."
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