23 pages • 46 minutes read
Edgar Allan PoeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Whether it is read as a serious and unsettling allegory for the absurdity of expecting life to mean something, or read as an ironic play, literally, on such pseudo-philosophizing, “The Conqueror Worm” ends up at the same thematic argument: death is forever waiting. Every organic life form ends with the gnawing and gnashing of insatiable worms. Whether the reader finds the image of the gaping maw of a monstrous red worm surreal or silly, whether in the end the reader cringes or smirks, the poem cannot escape the reality of death as an omnivorous creature whose appetite is insatiable and whose interests are catholic and terribly non-particular. The worms eat everything.
In the end, in literally the last line, the poet/speaker declares that the worm, the image of hungry death, is the hero of humanity’s spectacle-play. Given that the line provides no adverb to indicate the emotional direction for the theme, the reader is left to decide how to understand the poem’s theme about the inevitability of death. Keeping in mind that the poem is the creation of a young man, barely in his thirties, the theme lends itself to contradictory readings: yes, death is terrifying; yes, death is inescapable; and yes, death is monstrous in its absoluteness.
By Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within a Dream
Edgar Allan Poe
Annabel Lee
Edgar Allan Poe
Berenice
Edgar Allan Poe
Hop-Frog
Edgar Allan Poe
Ligeia
Edgar Allan Poe
Tamerlane
Edgar Allan Poe
The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe
The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe
The Gold Bug
Edgar Allan Poe
The Haunted Palace
Edgar Allan Poe
The Imp of the Perverse
Edgar Allan Poe
The Lake
Edgar Allan Poe
The Man of the Crowd
Edgar Allan Poe
The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Edgar Allan Poe
The Oval Portrait
Edgar Allan Poe
The Philosophy of Composition
Edgar Allan Poe