In "The Cockroach," Canadian poet Kevin Halligan uses the tale of a wandering roach to wryly explore the difficulty of finding purpose in life. The poem's speaker watches idly as a cockroach crawls around their room. The cockroach forges a straight path at first, but then it seems to lose confidence: it spins in circles, rambles around, climbs a shelf and looks stumped. The speaker feels this bug's indecision and perplexity as a mirror of their own situation: perhaps the speaker, too, is little more than an aimless bug trying to figure out what on earth it's doing. This poem, which takes the form of a sonnet, first appeared in Halligan's 2009 collection Utopia.
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I watched a ...
... and the door,
But soon he ...
... worsened over time.
After a while, ...
... I recognized myself.
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
Roaches in Literature — Read about some other literary cockroaches and consider why Halligan might have chosen a cockroach in particular as his subject.
Halligan on Cambodia — Read Halligan's essay on his experiences in Cambodia, where he wrote "The Cockroach."