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The Cockroach
With no clear sense of why they've ended up living the life they
SUMMARY do, this poem implies, the speaker has ended up wandering
around looking for meaning and direction that they can’t really
The poem's speaker describes the day when they watched a
find. By comparing their own life with that of a roach—not a
cockroach crawl across the floor, dodging a dust bunny as it
fragile but beautiful butterfly or a roving ladybug, but a
went. At first, the speaker observes, the cockroach seemed
pest—the speaker at least offers the consoling thought that
content to walk in a straight line between the wall paneling and
they can find some humor in this predicament by not taking
the door. But soon, the cockroach turned around and started
themselves too seriously.
wandering in circles around the table leg, then rolling over to
scratch its wings; it was as if the cockroach were feeling more
and more restless as time went on. Eventually, the cockroach Where this theme appears in the poem:
climbed up a shelf and stopped, looking unsure what to do next. • Lines 1-14
The speaker wondered: was this cockroach's discomfort a
fitting payment for some dreadful behavior in a past life? All the
speaker knew was, they saw the cockroach as a mirror of their
own predicament.
LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS
LINES 1-4
THEMES I watched a ...
... and the door,

AIMLESSNESS, CONFUSION, AND "The Cockroach" begins with a scene of mild squalor. The
speaker sits in their room watching passively as a “giant
PURPOSE
cockroach start[s] to pace” across the none-too-clean floor,
“The Cockroach” draws a tongue-in-cheek “skirting a ball of dust” that seems to have been “r[iding] the
comparison between a wandering bug and a confused speaker, floor” for some time.
suggesting that a sense of meaning and direction can be hard to
The speaker doesn’t seem bothered by the sight of a cockroach
find in life. The poem’s speaker watches as a cockroach crawls
wandering across the room. If anything, they feel mild interest,
across the floor. At first, the roach seems set on a “path
tracking the bug as it “trace[s] a path” from the “wainscot” (the
between the wainscot and the door,” a straight shot from the
wall paneling) to the door. Maybe they even have some degree
wall paneling to the way out. But then, some confusion seems
of fellow feeling for this cockroach. They anthropomorphize
to impede the bug. The cockroach begins to wander in “crooked
their leggy guest: they call it “him” rather than “it,” suggest that
rings” around the table, to irritably “scratch his wings” in
the bug seems “quite satisfied” with the “path” it’s chosen to
“restlessness," and at last to come to a perplexed halt at the top
take, and imagine that it “pace[s]” across the floor like a
of a shelf, as if “uncertain where to go” next.
thoughtful professor (rather than, say, scuttling or creeping).
The speaker, observing the roach’s inconclusive wanderings,
This imaginative description gives the first hints that this roach
starts to philosophize. Perhaps, they suggest, the bug’s
will become more to the speaker than an unwelcome pest. The
predicament is a punishment for “some vicious crime” he
cockroach—sharing the speaker’s dirty room like another
committed in a “former life.” But really, that’s just an idle theory;
person—will hold up a mirror to the speaker’s own
there’s no way to tell why this roach is in the situation he’s in. All
predicament.
the speaker can conclude is that the cockroach’s life feels
familiar: “I thought I recognized myself,” they conclude. In other Wryly, the speaker frames this tale of relating to vermin in an
words, the speaker feels just as lost, aimless, and confused as elegant old form: the sonnet
sonnet, a 14-line poem written in iambic
the cockroach does, and the speaker doesn't have any better pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM DUM
explanation for their predicament than they do for the rhythm, as in “I watched | a gigi- | ant cock
cock- | roach start | to
cockroach's. pace
pace”). These first four lines also feature the alternating ABAB
rh
rhyme
yme scheme typical of a Shakespearean sonnet. Framing this
The speaker’s unsuccessful attempt to figure out why the
poem in the favorite verse style of Petrarch and Shakespeare,
cockroach might be wandering around this way—and their
the speaker applies a touch of tongue-in-cheek formality to
sense that they and the cockroach share the same
their story of relating a little too well to a cockroach.
difficulty—suggest that human life can feel as mysterious,
purposeless, and insignificant as the ramblings of a lowly bug.

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LINES 5-9 philosophize in lines 12-13:
But soon he ...
... worsened over time. Was this due payment for some vicious crime
A former life had led to? […]
As the speaker watches, the cockroach that began its journey
across the room by walking a straight “path between the The awkward enjambment between the lines draws attention
wainscot and the door” now seems to lose focus and direction. to an ambiguous question. The speaker here wonders whether
The bug “turn[s] to jog in crooked rings,” wanders aimlessly the roach has been reincarnated this way as punishment for
around the “rusty table leg,” then pauses to “scratch his wings” some transgression in a past life. But these words could mean
in irritated confusion. Again, the speaker anthropomorphizes several things at once. Is the speaker asking whether the
the roach, seeing his actions not as the instinctive impulses of a roach’s reincarnation as a roach is punishment for past crimes?
mindless pest, but as signs of a ”mild” but “worsen[ing]” “attack Or is the speaker asking whether the roach’s confusion is its
of restlessness.” Indeed, he's the “victim” of this “attack of
punishment?
restlessness,” a persecuted sufferer. This cockroach has ennui.
Even the speaker seems to throw their hands up over the
The poem’s imagery paints a picture of the bug’s
question, whatever it is. “I don’t know,” they conclude; there’s
restlessness—and gives a glimpse of the speaker’s unlovely
no figuring out why this roach has ended up in the predicament
surroundings. The “crooked rings” the roach traces as it “jogs”
it’s in. All they can say is that they feel they “recognize[]” the
around the table leg suggest that it’s not trying to perform an
roach: this bug’s situation mirrors their own.
elegant loop-de-loop maneuver, for instance, but getting lost.
And the “rust[]” on that table leg, like the “ball of dust” the roach If that’s so, then the speaker, too, feels like they have no idea
dodged earlier, suggests that the speaker isn’t taking great care where they’re going or why. The speaker, too, feels like a
of their room. Everything here is just a little dingy. “victim,” nervous that they’re being punished for no reason they
can fathom. And the speaker, too, feels stuck, “uncertain” about
The poem’s rhythms mirror the bug’s irritable wanderings, too.
life itself. The roach becomes a symbol of their very self—and
The enjambment in lines 8-9 breaks the speaker’s sentence in a
perhaps of humanity in general. Who, this speaker seems to
spot where one would never pause in ordinary speech:
ask, can really answer the big questions about why we’re here
or what we’re doing with ourselves?
As if the victim of a mild attack
Of restlessness that worsened over time. Perhaps the only real conclusion this speaker comes to is that a
degree of humility and humor might help them to cope with
The jolting split between “attack” and “Of restlessness” feels as their predicament. Finding fellow feeling with a
awkward as the cockroach’s “crooked rings.” There's discomfort cockroach—likewise lost, likewise living in this dingy
in the poem's very sounds. room—they present themselves as just another bug doing its
best.
LINES 10-14
After a while, ...
... I recognized myself.
SYMBOLS
At last, the cockroach decides to stop wandering around on the
floor and try something new. He “climb[s] an open shelf” as if it THE COCKROACH
were a hilltop and he were trying to get some perspective. The cockroach becomes a symbol for the speaker in
(Note the openness of that shelf, too: the speaker’s room is as particular, but perhaps also a symbol for humanity in
bare as it’s grimy.) But no clarity is forthcoming: atop the shelf, general. When it makes its appearance on the speaker’s floor,
the roach stops, looking “uncertain where to go.” The poem the cockroach appears to be at a loss for goals. As the speaker
uses caesur
caesurae ae here to mirror the roach’s actions: watches, the roach crawls around in circles, with no apparent
idea of where it’s going or what it’s trying to do. This
After a while, || he climbed an open shelf aimlessness feels all too familiar to the speaker: “I thought I
And stopped. || He looked uncertain where to go. recognized myself,” they say, seeing in the cockroach’s
wanderings an image of their own confusion and uncertainty.
The comma in line 10 pauses the line and lets it change The speaker, in other words, has no clear sense of where
direction just as the roach does. Then the period in line 11 they’re going in life or why, any more than this bug does.
brings the line to an abrupt halt at just the moment the roach By choosing the lowly cockroach as a symbol of their own
freezes in uncertainty. confused life, the speaker pokes fun at themselves—and
The speaker, still watching, takes this opportunity to perhaps at everybody else, too. Perhaps, the symbolism

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suggests, we’re all just bugs wandering in circles, trying to cockroach’s pacing and jogging create an image of nervous,
figure out what to do in a world where no one can ever really frantic energy—the movements of a creature that really has no
know why we’re here or what we should be doing with idea what it’s trying to do, but wishes it did. This imagery also
ourselves. helps to suggest that the speaker might be projecting some of
their own feelings onto the roach, anthropomorphizing it as
Where this symbol appears in the poem: they ponder their aimlessness in life.

• Lines 1-14 The poem's imagery also helps readers to picture the room
where the speaker sits. The cockroach has to “skirt[] a dust ball”
to make its way across the floor and ends up “circling the rusty
table leg” and climbing up an “open shelf.” All of these images
POETIC DEVICES suggest a bare and run-down room: no books on the shelf, dust
on the floor, rust on the table. Perhaps this ever-so-slightly
ANTHROPOMORPHISM bleak backdrop contributes to the speaker’s feeling of being
All through “The Cockroach,” the speaker anthropomorphizes a lost in the world. This doesn’t sound like the most comfortable
cockroach, interpreting a bug’s actions as if they were those of or pleasant place to find oneself feeling stuck.
a person. This cockroach is a “he,” the speaker decides: a little
guy trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Where Imagery appears in the poem:
“At first,” the speaker observes, the cockroach seems “quite
• Lines 1-2: “a giant cockroach start to pace, / Skirting a
satisfied” to crawl along purposefully, charting a straight line ball of dust that rode the floor”
from the wall to the door. But the longer the speaker watches, • Lines 5-6: “he turned to jog in crooked rings, / Circling
the more they see confusion, irritation, and aimlessness in the the rusty table leg and back”
cockroach’s actions. When the cockroach stops to “scratch his • Line 10: “he climbed an open shelf”
wings,” for instance, the speaker imagines that the bug is “the
victim of a mild attack / Of restlessness.” And when the
CAESURA
cockroach at last comes to a halt on a bookshelf, the speaker
thinks he looks “uncertain where to go.” Caesur
Caesuraeae help the poem's shape and rhythms to resemble what
it describes: the hesitant, herky-jerky motions of a cockroach.
By anthropomorphizing the bug, reading human emotions into
its small and aimless trek across the room, the speaker No caesurae at all appear in the first nine lines of the poem,
demonstrates a feeling they end up stating explicitly at the end when the speaker first observes the cockroach making a dash
of the poem: they “recogniz[e]” the bug as an image of their own across the room. During this stretch of time, the cockroach is
aimlessness and uncertainty. Besides suggesting that human scrambling around frenetically: not choosing any one direction
lives might be as small and meaningless as bug lives, this to crawl in, but also not stopping and starting.
comparison injects some humor and fellow feeling into the It's when the roach finally seems to give up that mid-line pauses
poem: Roach, you and I are in this together, the poem seems to enter the poem. Listen to the changed rhythms of lines 10-11:
say.
After a while, || he climbed an open shelf
Where Anthropomorphism appears in the poem: And stopped. || He looked uncertain where to go.

• Lines 3-11
The comma in line 10 slows the poem's pace down. Then, the
period in line 11 brings it to a full and emphatic stop—at just the
IMAGERY same moment that the roach stops to consider its options. The
Dashes of imagery comically capture the wanderings of this poem's shape matches its action; readers have to lurch to a halt
poem's titular roach. When the speaker notices a cockroach in the middle of things just as the roach does.
making its way across their room, they don’t describe it as The poem's final caesura, which appears in line 13, injects a wry
scuttling or crawling, as many bug-observers might. Rather, note into the speaker's voice:
they describe it “start[ing] to pace” across the floor, as if it’s
deep in thought with its feelers crossed behind its back. That Was this due payment for some vicious crime
stately progress soon turns to confusion: the cockroach ends A former life had led to? || I don’t know
up “jog[ging] in crooked rings,” wandering in rough circles,
clearly at a loss for where to go. Here, the caesura at the question mark lends some comical
These descriptions of the cockroach’s wandering motion help gravity to a rather melodramatic question: "Is this roach paying
readers to imagine it more as a tiny little person than a bug. The for its past crimes with a reincarnation of buggy indecision?"

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The mid-line break leaves that question hanging dramatically
Where Enjambment appears in the poem:
for a moment before the speaker deflates it with an
exasperated "I don't know." • Lines 3-4: “trace / A”
• Lines 8-9: “attack / Of”
Where Caesur
Caesuraa appears in the poem: • Lines 12-13: “crime / A”

• Line 10: “while, he”

• Line 11: “stopped. He”
• Line 13: “to? I” VOCABULARY
Skirting (Lines 1-2) - Dodging around. The word conveys that
ENJAMBMENT the cockroach's movements are hardly graceful.
Unpredictable enjambments give the poem a jolting rhythm Wainscot (Line 4) - Decorative wooden panelling on the lower
that chimes with the cockroach's (and the speaker's) indecision. part of a wall.
For the most part, the poem's lines are end-stopped
end-stopped. When
enjambments appear here, then, they surprise the reader, Due payment (Lines 12-13) - A fair, just payback.
yanking the eye across line breaks.
The poem's first enjambment, for instance, appears between FORM, METER, & RHYME
lines 3-4:
FORM
At first he seemed quite satisfied to tr
trace
ace
“The Cockroach” is a sonnet
sonnet—a 14-line poem written in iambic
A path between the wainscot and the door,
pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM DUM
rhythm, as in “I watched | a gi
gi- | ant cock
cock- | roach start | to
Here, the enjambment falls at a particularly awkward spot, a
pace
pace”). However, it breaks away from the traditional sonnet
place where there wouldn't be even a hint of a pause in
form in a few ways. First off, there's the rh
rhyme
yme scheme
scheme:
everyday speech. While the speaker describes the cockroach's
apparently purposeful "path," the poem's rhythm says
• Most sonnets stick to one of two traditional
something different: the cockroach's beeline (if you will) for the
patterns of rhyme. The English sonnet rhymes
exit is already a little crooked. ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, while the Italian sonnet
There's a similarly jolting enjambment in lines 8-9: rhymes ABBA ABBA and concludes with a sestet (a
six-line passage) that mixes C, D, and E rhymes in
As if the victim of a mild attack various patterns.
Of restlessness that worsened over time. • Here, Halligan starts out with the English rhyme
pattern: ABAB CDCD. Then he switches to a more
Again, a line break falls in an awkward, unnatural place. Here, Italianate ending, with closing rhymes running EFG
readers might feel the poem's rhythm imitating the cockroach's EGF.
sudden "attack / Of restlessness" as it irritably "scratch[es]" its
wings with a back leg. Already, things are a little off-kilter. Then, in the middle of the
poem, this sonnet starts to feel downright askew. Typically, a
The poem's final enjambment draws attention to a comically
sonnet that’s divided into an octave (an eight-line passage) and
grand question:
a sestet (a six-line passage) introduces a volta between lines 8
and 9: a turning point when one thought finishes and a new or
Was this due payment for some vicious crime
contrasting idea enters the poem. Instead, lines 8-10 here lurch
A former life had led to? [...]
off in an unconventional direction:
Here, the odd enjambment insists that readers stop and spend
As if the victim of a mild attack
a minute dealing with the speaker's ambiguous, ungainly
Of restlessness that worsened over time.
phrasing (did the cockroach's former life lead to a crime, or did
After a while, he climbed an open shelf
the cockroach merely commit a crime in a former life? Is its
punishment "being a cockroach" or "being a confused
Rather than concluding an idea neatly in line 8, Halligan carries
cockroach"?). The confusion in the language here mirrors the
his observations of the wandering cockroach over into closing
confusion of speaker and of roach.
sestet, throwing the traditional form even further out of
balance.

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This choice feels right in keeping with the cockroach’s (and the
speaker’s) discombobulation and aimlessness. This speaker SPEAKER
might wish that life felt as tightly structured as a traditional
The speaker of "The Cockroach" is a rueful, self-deprecating,
sonnet—but disorder always seems to intrude.
playfully philosophical person, and perhaps they're also a
METER person who is down on their luck. Over the course of the poem,
they watch a “giant cockroach” traversing their room—a room
Like most sonnets
sonnets, “The Cockroach” is written in iambic
whose “dust ball[s]” and “rusty table legs” suggest that the
pentameter. That means that its lines each use five
speaker isn’t living in the cleanest or most pleasant
iambs—metrical feet with a da-DUM
DUM rhythm, as in line 1:
surroundings. The speaker doesn't seem at all perturbed that
an enormous cockroach has turned up in their room; they just
I watched | a gi
gi- | ant cock
cock- | roach start | to pace
watch it wander around as if massive household bugs are an
everyday sight for them.
This fills the poem with a steady, familiar pulse. The poem
doesn’t stick to that rhythm perfectly the whole way through, For that matter, the speaker doesn’t appear to have much to do
though (few sonnets do). For instance, line 2 switches up its besides watching a cockroach meandering around the room.
first foot: No wonder, then, that they relate to that cockroach’s aimless
wanderings. In this cockroach, they see an image of their own
Skirt
Skirting | a ball | of dust | that rode | the floor
floor. predicament, and perhaps of a lot of people’s predicament: a
difficulty in figuring out what they’re doing, why they’re doing
“Skirt
Skirting” is not an iamb, but a trochee
trochee—the opposite foot, with it, and how they ended up here at all.
a DUM
DUM-da rhythm. That change creates a jaunty little swing in The speaker’s identification with household vermin also
the line, harmonizing with the image of the cockroach swerving suggests a kind of amused, self-deprecating humility. Plenty of
to avoid that dust ball. bugs scuttle around aimlessly—but this speaker feels more akin
Elsewhere, Halligan introduces some stranger variations in the to a pesky roach than, say, a flitting butterfly.
rhythm, as in line 7:

And flip
flip- | ping right | over | to scr
scratch
atch | his wings
wings—
SETTING
The poem takes place in the speaker's room, as the speaker
The colliding stressed syllables in “right
right over” wedge an watches a cockroach scurrying around. The “wainscot” on the
ungainly trochee right into the middle of the line—just at the speaker’s walls—a kind of wooden paneling most popular
moment the cockroach’s sense of “restlessness” really takes before the 20th century—suggests an older building, while the
hold. This awkwardness reflects the poem’s big theme: a sense “rusty table leg” and “ball of dust” the cockroach circles suggest
that life doesn’t just tick smoothly and artfully along. a room that isn’t in particularly good order. Then, of course,
there’s the fact that a “giant cockroach” is crawling around in
RHYME SCHEME
here at all! The speaker doesn’t seem surprised or dismayed by
“The Cockroach” combines the rh rhyme
yme schemes of an English the appearance of the huge bug, but rather watches it with
and an Italian sonnet
sonnet. The poem's first eight lines use the curiosity; such leggy visitations seem like part of their everyday
alternating pattern of an English sonnet (which rhymes ABAB life.
CDCD EFEF GG), while the closing six lines, with their
These peeks at the speaker’s room might hint that their
changing three-rhyme pattern, borrow from the flexible ending
identification with the cockroach doesn’t just have to do with a
of an Italian sonnet (which starts out rhyming ABBA ABBA and
general sense of purposelessness, but a specific (and tongue-in-
ends with some combination of C, D, and E rhymes). Altogether,
cheek) sense of grime, dinginess, and lowliness. The setting
the rhyme scheme looks like this:
reflects the speaker’s sense of their own situation: they feel as
ABAB CDCD EFG EGF confused, disoriented, and humble as the cockroach, and who
This mixed-up rhyme scheme suits a tale of confusion and has time to sweep up dust bunnies when one’s very purpose in
disorientation. This sonnet kicks off in one rhyme scheme, only life feels uncertain?
to abandon it, losing itself in disorderly wanderings—just as the
cockroach starts out heading in a straight line toward the door,
then finds itself turning in aimless circles. CONTEXT
LITERARY CONTEXT
Kevin Halligan (1964-present) is a Canadian poet. Born in

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Toronto, he lived abroad for many years in Cambodia and had only recently emerged from years of civil war, a conflict
England. He has published three volumes of poetry: Blossom that succeeded the long and terrible dictatorship of the
Street (1999), The Belfast of the North (2005), and Utopia (2009) murderous Pol Pot. Cambodia established a fragile democracy
(in which "The Cockroach" was first collected). in 1993, but the new government was also riddled with
“The Cockroach” shows the influence of several different corruption. The country suffers from riots, poverty, and
branches of literary history. The sonnet form Halligan plays political suppression to this day. As a Canadian immigrant
with here goes back to the Middle Ages—so in one sense, this coming to terms with this backdrop of violence and fear,
poem draws on a grand old poetic lineage, handed down from Halligan might well have struggled more seriously with
Shak
Shakespeare
espeare to Milton to Keats to Barrett Browning
Browning. The idea questions about life’s meaning and his own direction as he
of seeing a human reflection in the natural world might also wrote this poem.
come across as rather capital-R Romantic: the Scottish
Romantic poet Robert Burns, for instance, famously gazed on a
cowering mouse and reflected that the "best-laid schemes o'
MORE RESOUR
RESOURCES
CES
Mice and Men" alike go wrong.
EXTERNAL RESOURCES
But this speaker’s cheeky, deflating vision of himself as a
• Roaches in Liter
Literature
ature — Read about some other literary
wandering cockroach might also owe something to Franz
cockroaches and consider why Halligan might have chosen
Kafka’s 1915 The Metamorphosis (in which the unfortunate a cockroach in particular as his subject. (https:/
(https://www
/www.h-
.h-
Gregor Samsa famously wakes up one morning to discover he’s net.org/~nilas/totem/roach.html)
been transformed into a monstrous bug) and to Don Marquis'
1927 ararch
chyy and mehitabel (in which a hip vers libr
libree poet is • Halligan on Cambodia — Read Halligan's essay on his
reincarnated as a cockroach, much to his exasperation). By experiences in Cambodia, where he wrote "The
tweaking an elegant, rigorous poetic form and uniting it with Cockroach." (https:/
(https://www
/www.khmer440.com/k/2011/08/
.khmer440.com/k/2011/08/
comically grotesque bug symbolism
symbolism, Halligan pokes fun at squaresville/)
literary tradition as much as human foibles.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT HOW T

TO
O CITE
“The Cockroach” displays a very turn-of-the-20th-century
sense of humor. The poem’s choice to examine the big MLA
questions about life through the tale of a cockroach (and to use Nelson, Kristin. "The Cockroach." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 14 Mar
the elegant sonnet form to do so) reflects a 1990s-2000s taste 2024. Web. 20 Mar 2024.
for deflating old tropes, traditions, and values. (Carol Ann
Duffy's 1999 The World's Wife, in which she satirizes male CHICAGO MANUAL
historical and literary greats by presenting them through the Nelson, Kristin. "The Cockroach." LitCharts LLC, March 14, 2024.
eyes of their fed-up wiv
wives
es, might serve as one good Retrieved March 20, 2024. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/
contemporary poetic example.) kevin-halligan/the-cockroach.
But the poem might also show the mark of some darker
uncertainties. Halligan published this poem while he was living
in Cambodia in 2009. When Halligan moved there, Cambodia

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