Unit II LS. 8 COCKROACH – KEVIN HALLIGAN (bba & bhm sem 2 B.U)

Unit II

1. 8 COCKROACH   

–    KEVIN HALLIGAN

Kelvin Halligan is a Canadian poet. He was born in 1964 in Canada but spent most of his time in the England. He travelled a lot and wrote the poem ‘The Cockroach’, on one of his jaunts to Asia.

The poem cockroach is part of his collection which is called: “Blossom Street,” to which ‘The Cockroach’ received the most recognition. There is not much information on his personal life and he describes his own life in the poem.

The theme of this poem is Person vs. Self as the character has a problem deciding what to do in the situation.

To be specific, in this poem the character (cockroach) has a problem deciding what to do in his situation when he has finally reached his ‘destination’ at the top of the shelf – but then, he hesitates as he does not know what to do.

It is an extended metaphor of the persona (the poet himself) or human beings as a whole. This is first hinted by the fact that the cockroach is ‘giant’ – is it large for its species, or large to the point it is the size of a human?

He gives the cockroach human characteristics such as: ‘jog’, ‘trace’, ‘circle’ which are more of what a human being would do than that a cockroach would.

The poet further describes the frantic actions of a human being: How we are content with our situations (at first he seemed quite satisfied to trace) And then after a while, he gets bored (but soon he turned to jog in crooked rings) He is then struck by a case of restlessness, but then finally finds something exciting, new – the open shelf

When he reached the open shelf, he begin to question himself of whether what he’d come for was worth it.

In the last two lines, the writer shows the turn (solution to the problem) and the cockroach personifies the character of the poet/human being as he asked: ‘A former life had led to? I don’t know, Except I thought I recognised myself.’