Anatomy of Cockroach
The title of the poem
“Cockroach” by Charles Bukowski indicates a creepy crawler by a human point of
view. Humans do not want the existence of cockroach in this world but this
creature has the right to live here the same as humans do. The speaker in this
poem is first person and male. The reason for guessing male is when any male
addresses other anonymous gender then usually refers as (He, Him) a male and
the speaker addresses the cockroach as a male. The speaker talks about
Hollywood and Western Street which is a symbol of youth and that’s how we know
he is young to middle aged.
The speaker is a dominating character
who does not want anyone around him who is not on the same level or class as
him. He does not care if any poor people are dying around him; in fact, he gets
pleasure by killing weak innocent creatures as we see in those lines:
I
got the can and sprayed
and
sprayed and sprayed
and
finally the roach came out
and
gave me a very dirty look.
then
he fell down into
the
bathtub and I watched
him
dying
with
a subtle pleasure.
(7-14)
In the poem the
poet addresses the poor in general. He is rich and he does not want someone in
his neighborhood or around him who is poor. “Cockroach” is a symbolic poem and
it describes how the powerless are treated in this world by powerful rich men.
It should not be like this. They are the creatures of the same creator and should
be treated the same as others. Regarding how one may respond to the speaker
negatively because the speaker is a dominating person, and the world does not
like dominating person.
The poem “Cockroach” is situated
in a bathroom “while I was pissing and as/ I picked him up with some greenblue
toilet/ paper and flushed him.”(3, 17-19) which is symbol of the whole world.
In the world comparative weaker people get pounded by the powerful rich people.
In this poem, the timeframe is recent because the green blue toilet paper was
invented in the nineteenth century. But the symbolic poem’s timeframe is
infinite. It is a continuous process from ancient time to now. But people are
much more aware now than before, they want change and to stop the powerful from
dominating the weak. The most recent situation in the history was slavery in
the United States. Many countries in the world became aware of slavery and
began to protest against it. The tone of the poem is the same throughout the
whole body. The theme of the poem is the better traditional truth; the
relationship between powerful and powerless. Very few lucky fellows get power,
and we see everywhere in this would that powerful people do not always care for
the poor because they do not want to see their sorrow. But they have enough
time to see powerless dying as mentioned in the poem: “I watched/ him dying/
with a subtle pleasure” (12-14). The rich have no time to think about how the
powerless poor feel when getting dominated. The cockroach is a symbol of the
poor who get dominated and abused for not paying the rent! The cockroach has no
voice to speak and that’s why they cannot protest. This poem suggests an unfair
society.
After reading this poem I
personally liked it. Over the centuries this has been a true image of the
society. When I started reading this it was funny to read, but when I got the
meaning it was very painful; I can feel this poem. The way the poem is written
is very nice, it got my attention from the first line “the cockroach crouched/against
the tile” (1-2) and I enjoyed the way it becomes a symbol of rude reality and
the silent scream of the powerless.
