Cockroach Analysis

Essay: What significance does the poet sees in the cockroach? How does he convey it to us? The poet “Kevin Halligan” has been traveled around the world and he wrote this poem when he was in somewhere in Asia, he has brings some idea of Buddhism through this poem. The cockroach in this poem can represent in two ways. First, the more obvious meaning is the poet is watching a cockroach “pace” around the floor. However, after reader analysis and understand that Kevin Halligan uses the “giant” cockroach as a metaphor to describe himself and his life. The poet can coveys his messages through his choice of structure, language, words, action or movement of cockroach and finally he comes back to talk about himself. The poem is written in the form of sonnet. He condenses his message and ideas into fourteen lines, which not only makes the poem more dramatic but also emphasizes his reflections. There is also a regular rhyme scheme, ababcdcd in the last 6 lines and defdfe. The slight change in rhythm from the first 8 lines to last 6 lines helps to highlight the change in the cockroach’s movements, or the poet’s life. The regular rhythm in the octave also helps to set the “pace” of the cockroach and may represent a clock ticking as in time passing by. This idea is also suggested by the choice of Kevin Halligan’s vocabulary. He uses time phrase to convey the idea of the stage in his life, such as “at first” in the third line, poet describes the beginning of his life that “he seemed quite satisfied”, also implies that he was happy with his life then, and the verb “to trace” suggests that there was a clear “path”. In line four he was guided from one stage of his life to the next – just like how the cockroach walks “a path between the wainscot and the door”. “But soon” in the fifth line, “jog in crooked rings” suggest that he turn himself to be a traveler and spend his time on travelling around the word. “Over time” and “after a while” also suggest an idea of time in