Preview

The Cockroach - Summary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
283 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Cockroach - Summary
The persona is watching the cockroach as if it is a human being not a trifle insect in an objective view. This foreshadows the twist at the end which is that the poet is the subject of the poem. The persona can even sense how it feels and thinks; 'he seemed quite satisfied' 'he looked uncertain where to go'. These illustrate that the cockroach begins to feel distracted and confused suggesting that the persona involves his thoughts to it. Therefore this, in turn, involves the readers in the poem furthermore. The cockroach is an extended metaphor of the persona and human being. The cockroach moves through 'a path between the wainscot and the door' which symbolizes a steady path that people follow early in life. But, 'soon he turned to jog in crooked rings' suggests human being's confusion in later life reinforcing a sense of confusion

The Cockroach - Kevin Halligan
... Through the allegory in "The Cockroach" Kevin Halligan reflects upon the value of life and the many challenges we face. Structure, tone and language techniques draw attention to the amount of detail and lessons that can be observed through an usually overlooked insect. The hyperbole of "a giant cockroach" conveys the closeness with which the persona is observing it, showing the reader the irony in his fascination and interest with this seemingly insignificant pest. The repetition of the insect here and in the title reinforces its importance, suggesting that this is also a device allowing one to reflect upon life. The unusual image of a lone cockroach that the persona empathises with highlights his feeling of loneliness; that they are considered an annoyance draws parallels with his despondency and identity

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    It mentions one-ness, which shows how, even with all of the power felt in the first three stanzas, she is not overwhelmed but is instead developing as a person. The focus then increases even more to focus on a single ant and the work she is doing, and the narrator reflects on the life of that ant, at first thinking her tiny and unimportant. However, she then changes her views, deciding that “...if she lives her life with all her strength, is she not wonderful and wise?” (17). Though the ant may not have an impact on the world as a whole, the fact that she is doing all that she can to make the most out of her life makes her important. The extreme focus on this ant after the unrestrained disorder of the first 3 stanzas presents a sharp contrast that shifts the mood to one of calm discovery. The narration is now much more controlled as the narrator starts to understand, in essence, life and the world around her. The narrator describes this feeling of self discovery as ascending a “miraculous pyramid of everything”…

    • 599 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Side Bet Sequel

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages

    But he was not alone. Make no mistake he the rat and the roach were not friends. No, and they never would be. For, when the boat had come and taken the man, the rat had thought himself the lone stranded survivor. Yet, without even the slightest of agility or cunning mastered by the rat to guide itself at all, the cockroach had taken the rat’s food and half of his crevice. Perhaps the thing had burrowed into the stash of biscuits biting down and thrown off the boat and onto the rat’s island. Either way it infuriated the rat.…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The novel Revolt of the Cockroach People by author Oscar Zeta Acosta is a very interesting story that shares the life of a Chicano lawyer by the name of Buffalo Zeta Brown; he is the main character in the book and is the archetype of “masculinity”. This novel takes place in the late sixties early seventies in the City of Los Angeles, California during the Chicano movement which was a time of turmoil for many Chicanos. They were discriminated against, thought of as troublesome, and faced social plight. The novel opens up during a riot on Christmas Eve in front of Saint Basil’s Roman Catholic Church, the church was built for five million dollars: “a harsh structure for puritanical worship, a simple solid excess of concrete, white marble, and black steel”(Zeta 11). Mr. Brown is in the midst of the chaos of the riot but police are told not to touch or harm him because he is their lawyer. Brown had come to Los Angeles during the year 1968 in search of a story to write about, not to be a lawyer, but that is the way it worked out. As a result, he became the lawyer of thirteen Chicanos from the Tooner Flats barrio. While in Los Angeles Mr. Brown stayed in the Belmont Hotel located at Third and Hill Streets, he took a look at all that surrounded his new temporary home and did not like it one bit; it was surrounded by “winos in tennies, skinny fags in tight pants and whores in purple skirts” (Zeta 23)…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the poems “An Advancement of Learning” and “An August Midnight” the connection between both poems is their focuses on their encounters with creatures, Heaney’s with a rat on a river embankment and Hardy’s with several nocturnal insects that fly through his window. Both draw on the idea of their personal encounters with creatures to portray these ideas.…

    • 1153 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “The Rattler”, the narrator came across a snake while “pleasantly” taking a stroll within the evening’s path. What began as a peaceful, “sweet”, and “pleasant” late afternoon transformed into a daunting “abrupt” scene. The author used excellent point of view, diction, organization, and syntax to express emotions of hostility between the snake and himself.…

    • 475 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many metaphors are employed within Gascoigne's poem, relating the speaker's troubles to understandable situations that allow readers to imagine and empathize with the speaker's situation. With a metaphor consisting of the mouse and bait (lines 5-6), the mouse has been able to escape a trap and fears of being trapped again. This compares to the speaker’s relationship because it implies that his relationship with the woman is toxic, relating the woman to the trap and himself to the mouse, the woman effectively trapping him into the toxic relationship. A second metaphor consists of a fly…

    • 317 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wild’s viewpoint of roaches contradicts Morley’s by validating the cockroach’s misaligned reputation through dark diction and nightmarish images, making the reader uncomfortably aware of its eeriness. Unlike Morley’s friendly roach who raids the kitchen at night, Wild’s creepy roaches take possession of human beings invading their bodies. This roach, as opposed to Morley’s, is eating disgusting gunk in the bathroom that no person would ever consider to be a meal, something so noxious. The roaches begin to take over his body, ”nibbling his toes,” “probing in his veins,” and “scrambling up his throat” in the same way that roaches take over the sewers in the dark of night “crouched like…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One issue in the story that seems to eat away at the narrator’s life is his health problem. In the story, the narrator states, “A heart attack. Myocardial infarction, minor. I will no longer run for a train, and in my shirt pocket I keep a small vial of nitroglycerine pills” (pg 4). I think Canin is using a metaphor between the insects and his heart attack by showing examples in the story of how his heart attack has slowed his life down and enabled him to…

    • 1100 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “An Advancement of Learning” Heaney recalls on his childhood fear of rats. This is due to his experiences of fear growing up on a farm as a child. The rats provide a link between his childhood and his inner-city life as an adult. “An August Midnight” is based on Hardy’s beliefs that all animals were conscious beings worthy of respect based on the evolutionary theory that all living things are related. This interest is also evident in the close up acute details of the insects’ anatomy “winged, horned and spined”.…

    • 320 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ultimately, the persona in the poem struggles to identify herself as a bee in the hive and is left estranged by the duality of autonomy and powerlessness as shown through the metaphoric irony of the power of the female bee in contrast to the patriarchal reality of human society, even of the simplest kind (a village).…

    • 1142 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Most people would assume that humans are superior to insects. This self-centered idea is a harmful aspect of humanity, as people do not try to learn from creatures that are regarded as inferior. However, in “Honeydew,” by Edith Pearlman, Alice Toomey, the strict headmistress of Caldicott Academy, and Emily Knapp, an insect-loving student, are the human exceptions who recognize the virtue insect communities are built around: selflessness. The admiring repetition of insects, Alice’s transformation into an open individual, and the symbolism of honeydew suggest that Alice and Emily, through Alice’s metamorphosis and Emily’s obsession with insects, replace their human attribute of being self-centered with the selfless character of insects.…

    • 1730 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The structure of the poem helps to show the speaker’s response to the death. The poems structure is laid out in steps; first with the cutting of the toad’s leg, “A toad the power mower caught, chewed and clipped of a leg.” Secondly, with the laying under the cineraria leaves, “With a hobbling hop has got under the cineraria leaves.” Last part if the structure reveals the toad’s final thoughts and its final hour of living, “As still as stone, and soundlessly attending, dies toward deep monotone.”…

    • 314 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    However, when looking back at the poem, the author seems to have foreshadowed the outline of the poem and given us clues of what might be happening next. In the first line “The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard”. The author uses personification and personifies the buzz saw by giving it the actions of snarling and rattling as an angry person might. Personifying the buzz saw can also give us some kind of imaginative effect. And because he uses the word “snarled” we can predict that something unfortunate is going to happen since it's usually used in a negative sense.…

    • 102 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My favorite page of the Tony DiTerlizzi version of "The Spider and the Fly" was the illustration of the spider and fly at the entrance to the parlor. I liked this picture in particular because I thought that the warning signs for the fly to not go into the parlor were less obvious than other parts of the book, even though it was at the climax point of the fly making her decision to accepts the spider’s original offer or not. The subtle images in the picture are the butterfly wing curtains and the mirror that looks like it is made out of the shell of what used to be an insect. Along with the more subtle images, the depiction of the insect ghost being kicked away by the spider is something that I think a kid would definitely pick up on from the page. They would understand that the ghost bug is trying to warn the fly not to go in the parlor.…

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Hi the Name Is What

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the novel Buried Onions by Gary Soto a literary element was found in the story. The onion and cockroaches symbolize something in the book. The onion symbolize is all the towns sadness is burried underground but when they come up trouble begin, “I thought about the gaint onion, that remarkable bulb of sadness”(pg.2). The cockroaches symbolize the gang of Fresno that hate Eddie, the roach's persistence can be shown by a quote, "About an hour later when I entered my apartment, I was surprised to see that the cockroaches had returned. Their antennae were all bent, and some of their legs were crippled, but they were…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays