We often call Edgar Allen Poe one of the
fathers of terror and mystery. His
twisted, Macabre tales and poems are filled with great detail and often end
with a dismal twist. "The Conqueror Worm" is one example
of his masterful rhymes and tells how a play on life turns into reality for
mankind.
The setting is a theater but it is not just a
site for plays. Poe describes it to be
that way to trick the reader, but the theater is actually the setting for
mankind. We play our lives in this stage
for everyone else to see. Lines three
through six describe the crowd and how they are there to see "a play of
hopes and fears." If people would
look beyond the point of reading the line just to understand the words, they would
see that the play is actually the lives of everybody in society. I say this because everyone has their own
hopes like getting a good job, succeeding, having a family and ultimately
dieing happily. Along with their hopes,
everyone also has their personal fears.
The characters of the poem are also some very
meaningful keys in showing the hidden meaning.
The first stanza describes the crowd that has gathered to watch the
enactment of our human lives. Lines
three and four states "an angel throng, bewinged, and bedight in veils,
and drowned in tears." Poe is
stating that a group of angels is going to watch the spectacle put on for them,
although they are already drowning in the tears from plays before. The orchestra that plays for them is another
set of characters that have meaning.
They represent the background in everyone's life by "playing the
music of the spheres." A third set
of characters that show hidden meaning is the "Mimes, in the form of God
on high." They denote the people
that inhabit the earth. Poe describes
them as "Mere puppets they, who come and go at bidding of vast formless
things." The vast formless things
are the ideas that we have. Ideas like
the things that we think we have to do for ourselves to survive and
succeed. They also make up drama of the
play. A final, prominent figure in this
dramatic performance is the conqueror worm.
Poe illustrates it as "a blood-red thing." He images the end of mankind as this but it
could take any form. It is correctly
named because in the end no one is left standing except the "conqueror
worm."
Many of the lines of "the Conqueror
Worm" try to tell us a deeper meaning to the poem by using certain figures
of speech. The second stanza tells us
that the "vast formless things" spread trouble by "flapping from
out their condor wings invisible woe!"
Poe was stating that the vast formless things spread their trouble in
great fanning motions like the condor flaps its wings. The most important figure of speech would
have to be the stage curtain coming down like a funeral pall violently ending
mankind and showing the Conqueror Worm as the victor. "The rush of a storm" signifies how
the curtain quickly came to end the play and covered "each quivering
form" to show that mankind was truly finished.
Poe uses great sound in the poem. Many of the alliterations add intrigue to the
epic of the magnificent slaughtering worm.
One example of alliteration is the use of the letter l in the first two
lines. "Lo! Tis a gala night within the lonesome latter years!" gives
the reader an idea that Poe is telling a story with an eery setting. Sadness is also very evident in this line
because it foreshadows the angel mob donned in veils to hide their tears. Another use of alliteration is in the lines
"through a circle returneth in to the self-same spot." The stanza that it lies in tells us about the
plot of the play itself. The usage of
the words beginning with s give us an idea of how the main character, or
mankind, cannot escape a circle of bad events which will eventually lead to its
death.
Edgar Allen Poe wanted us to see how he thinks
the world will end with this poem. He
described the end as a disgusting, grotesque worm devouring us all but in a
real sense, the play showed the troubles of man and how it will end our
lives. The play was fittingly described
in the last stanza by the mourning, pale colored angels as a tragedy that they
called "Man".
No comments:
Post a Comment