23 pages • 46 minutes read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Conqueror Worm
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1843A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Mimes
The theatrical piece Poe describes here centers on mimes who move about the stage restlessly, “hither and thither” (Line 11), their apparent lack of clear direction suggesting nothing less than how our lives unfold in chaos, without logic or purpose. The stage description is vague, of course: the mimes are “in the form of God on high” (Line 9). That draws on the theological premise of Judeo-Christianity itself, that we are each made in God’s image. There we are, Poe says, adorable little godlings, running about the world like anxious puppets uncertain of where we go and where these distant and unapproachable gods move us.
Although the figure of the mime has become something of a pop culture punchline, the art of mime dates back to the spectacle theater of Antiquity. Given the sense of theater as symbolic, even as religious ritual, the function of the mimes, whose elaborate dancing on stage created an atmosphere of rich suggestion, was to present in their elaborate and artful movements symbols of life’s own complex dynamics. They presented difficult-to-understand abstracts right there on stage, physically creating the idea of, for instance, love, or courage, or pride, or even death. For Poe, to stage his elaborate apocalypse by using mimes moves the play beyond the reach of words—mimes convey the implications of raw, profound emotions in their mute movements. Thus, the mimes, moving so carelessly, so clumsily about the stage symbolize how blindly we move, anxious despite, or perhaps because of, the gods we insist on creating.
The Theater
“Lo! ‘t is a gala night” (Line 1). Thus, the poem opens. So much is revealed by the happy and excited exclamation point. Poe frames the entire tale of the carnivorous giant worm as a play, a theater piece. Indeed, the poem opens by suggesting that this is a gala night, a time for getting dressed up, a time to enjoy a night out, hardly a forbidding and dark premise.
An audience is gathering to be entertained, engaged, even amused. This poem is not set in a cathedral or a hospital or a graveyard. It is in a theater; it is a play, the very word suggesting that even as the drama unfolds and gets stranger in each stanza, that the audience must not forget they are sitting comfortably, safely in a theater watching this spectacle tragedy. It’s noteworthy that, had the poem offered a sixth stanza, that stanza would inevitably have recorded that once the curtain went down, the audience would be taking up their coats and heading to the exit while the actors got up and started removing makeup, and the stagehands wheeled back the giant worm and then began the tedious job of tidying up the stage for the next performance.
Get caught up in the sensation, in the drama, in the special effects performance, Poe insists with the sharp-eyed savvy of a master showman. Go ahead. Give the people what they want: macabre special effects, mysterious characters, weird action, spooky music, and a bloody climactic ending. That frame symbolizes Poe’s unflappable sense of irony. Yes, get involved with the weirdness but remember that even strangeness can be pre-packaged. If the poem disturbs, it disturbs in the way that any contemporary audience might find a gory movie upsetting. The triumph of the worm, symbolically the triumph of death, is hardly a fresh insight; everything that lives must die. In this sense, the poem emphasizes relishing life as a radically staged play itself, as apocalyptic and grotesque as it may be.
The Big Worm
It is, in the end, just a worm. A big worm, and a worm with teeth, perhaps, but still it is a worm. The image of a worm might play uneasily with reminders of death and decay and the inevitability of the body’s corruption, but the construct of this giant worm edges the play’s dramatic apocalyptic-styled ending with irony, even humor.
After all, it is a really big worm.
Had Poe wanted to go for more serious effects to stage his apocalypse, the Book of Revelation offers an array of animals who might usher in the End Times with more dignity, more integrity, animals who would come already weighted with Gospel-validated symbolism: an eagle, for instance, or a great white horse, or an intimidating ox, or a mighty lion. Revelation even offers the great seven-headed scarlet beast, a kind of angry dragon, far more intimidating than Poe’s big red worm. That Poe elects to move his drama toward this fantastical creature, that he elects to have a really big worm destroy the stage and symbolically eat all the actors/mimes suggests that he reserves the right to read the ending as a delightful, even hilarious spectacle—a mockalypse. As the lights dim and the play ends, we watch with mock-horror as this worm, a familiar garden pest, renders the stage an empty wasteland. It is difficult to read that this is intended to be a tragedy (Line 39) without at least a tiny and forgiving smile. Yes, the death-worm will eat us all; yes, death conquers all of us; now don’t forget your hat and coat, have a good night, and thanks for coming to the show. The same show will repeat tomorrow night.
Related Titles
By Edgar Allan Poe
