Analysis Of The Poem ' The Conqueror Worm '

In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “ The Masque of the Red Death”, Poe tells of a plague that has long devastated the country. The short story revolves around one character in particular, the wealthy Prince Prospero, and how he decides to deal with the situation. This narrative work is an allegory, meaning it has two levels of meaning. It has both a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning. An allegory has the overall purpose to teach you a life lesson. The allegory in this short story can be revealed by the symbolic significance of Prince Prospero’s name, the seventh chamber of the abbey, and the ticking clock.

Caught in the net- Greed- As the lights from the Spirit of Adventure beam down on the helpless, trapped animal, it represents how greedy humans can be and how they will harm other living creatures to get what they want.

The theme of fate in Beowulf is ongoing and it manifests itself in the minds of the characters, especially Beowulf. The poem begins with an introduction from the narrator that hints at the events of misfortune that are coming in the future for the great hero Beowulf. The narrator says, “how could they know fate, the grim shape of things to come” (Beowulf, 1233-1234). The opening of the poem is of a funeral for the beloved leader Shield Sheafson. This foreshadows the death of Beowulf and in a sense presents the reader with the mentality of a connection between fate and death. Death is simply the end of a person’s life that is bound to happen, very much like the effect of fate on life. There is an ongoing conflict in the poem between the Anglo-Saxon idea of fate (wyrd) and the Christian God. This may have caused widespread tension among the readers and interpreters of the poem that lingers to this day.

The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe is a poem embedded with deep symbolism. Death is a common thing among Edgar Allen Poe’s poems and the conqueror worm is definitely not an exception. The very theme in the story is that we are like puppets in the play of life, putting on a show for a higher deity. Edgar Allan Poe did a good job weaving the theme in with tons of symbolism, however the idea that death conquers all is easily found if you look close enough. First indication of the theme is in line 12 where it clearly states that “Mere Puppets they who come and go at the bidding of vast formless things.” that portion from the first stanza shows the Poe viewed people as puppets, and that humanity or “the puppets” come and go at the will of something

The deaths of his parents, sister and brother, all taken by tuberculosis, lead to Edgar Allan Poe’s obsession around the subject of death. This obsession enterprises historically ingenious writings, that did not just scare the reading population by inducing a death at the climax or tying in a death to create a gasp worthy ending. Poe’s historic greatness was his ability to use death as a catalyst, not an end. His stories, specifically short stories, strengthened the idea that the end of a life, has so much more meaning, than just the end. This precision was formed by how Poe ingeniously used the knowledge to not only comprise stories involving the subject of death, but used the stories to create deep ideas of the phantom of fatality. The short stories “The Black Cat,” “The Facts in the Case of M.Valdemar,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” all feature the inventive writing skills of Poe, that have enthralled populations since their publications.

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

The Anglo-Saxons believed that when a man was injured or killed wrongfully, he should be avenged by his kinsmen. One form of atonement for a wrongful death was the wer-gild, which means “man gold” where the family of the deceased was paid a sum to compensate them. Given that the Anglo-Saxons believed heavily in honor and leaving a legacy, since they had no afterlife, not paying the wer-gild was an extremely disrespectful action. This is displayed in Beowolf narrated as “…long against Hrothgar / Grendel struggled: his grudges he cherished, / murderous malice, many a winter, / strife unremitting, and peacefully wished he / life-woe to lift from no liegeman at all of the men of / the Dane-folk, for money to settle, / no counsellor needed count for a moment / on handsome amends at the hands of the murderer;” (Beowolf), meaning that Grendel was brutally murdering Hrothgar’s men for many winters and would give no money to settle the wer-gild, bringing dishonor to the lord’s name.

Death is an important theme in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Masque of the Red Death”.

This essay will discuss the themes in Poe’s writing that mirror his personal life and, in addition, the fear and supernatural motivators for his characters. First, I will discuss Poe’s background and explore how he became best known as a poet for his tales of mystery and macabre.

Using the carnival as a background is appropriate because it is a time of celebration when everything is in chaos and people have lost their self-control. The carnival may be a symbol of Montresor’s own madness and the crazy thoughts in his head. The carnival usually indicates joyful social interaction but it is distorted by Montresor. Montresor’s reference to the bones and vaults of his family foreshadow the story’s descent into the underworld. The underground travels of the two men are a metaphor for their trip to hell. The carnival is essentially for the living but Montresor takes it into the vaults underground, to the realm of the dead and the satanic. The setting Poe chose for the story adds to the terror. Most of the events of the story runs in dark, damp tunnels piled with the bones of dead people. By taking Fortunato into the vaults, Montresor cuts him off from help. The two characters are underground and isolated.

The theme of the poem “The Conqueror Worm” by Edgar Allan Poe is, in a world full of killing, often the killer is rewarded with the recognition of a hero, meaning perspective is everything. To those on the Conqueror Worm’s side, his actions are ones to celebrate. He destroyed victoriously, therefore he deserves praise, but to those who do not have the blessing of being alive anymore and to those who lost someone they loved, even to those who are now scarred by the scene they had just witnessed, all due to the Conqueror Worm, he is nothing less than a demon. This sets the mood of tension and everything that comes with it, such as strain or pressure. In the fourth stanza of this poem it states, “the play is the tragedy, ‘Man,’ and it’s hero the

Virginia Woolf’s “Death of a Moth” may, at first glance, seem lackluster; however, her creative and impactful message is brilliantly hidden within symbolism that demands an abstract perspective. She uses imagery to describe a moth and personify its actions in order to present it as a symbol for life. Additionally, pathos throughout her work evokes emotions and prompts the analytical thinking needed to understand her underlying meaning. Thus, Woolf’s analysis about life is composed using symbolism, imagery, and pathos that combine to create a contemplative style and motivational purpose.

A resistant reading of the poem uncovers the idea that religion, specifically the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, is intrinsically harmful and retrogressive in nature. If the ‘snake’ is interpreted as a synecdoche for Judaeo-Christian religious tradition as a whole, a profoundly negative opinion of such an ideology is formed throughout the poem. Without the ‘snake’ that is this religion, there would be no “pain and suffering”. The poem asks, “what could bear such a weight”, interrogating the conscience of religion, implying guilt on its behalf. Furthermore, the imagery suggested in the second stanza surrounding the snake’s “shadow” evokes negative ideas concerning the nature of the religion, which is further bolstered by its ability to “separate itself” from this shadow, and to “move on

     In Woolf’s essay, the battle between life and death is somehow seen as both pathetic and noble. Pathetic because death will always win regardless the desire for life; but noble in how one faces death – on our back, defeated, or on our feet, and in dignity. Woolf states “one could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death” and shows the moth’s courageous journey into death (1179). “As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” declared by an influential leader Martin Luther King Jr. As a soldier againsts unfairness, King strongly states that people should fight for freedom. Driven by human nature, humans are always chasing freedom. In “A Century Later,” the Pakistan-born British poet Imtiaz Dharker uses the poetic devices of symbolism, diction, and allusion to explore how perseverance drives freedom.