Analyzing "The Bat"

The Bat

Theodore Roethke

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.

His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.

He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.

But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:

For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.

The poem, “The Bat”, by Theodore Roethke is a very interesting poem. I think the speaker of the poem is an author or any human. The author’s diction uses a rhyming beat, that is very easy to notice. He rhymes the last word of each line to the other line in each stanza.
This poem does not have a lot of imagery. Some items of imagery are, “he loops in crazy figures”, and “His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead”. These images show how the bat flies erratically, and that his pulse is so slow, that we can sometimes be under the impression that these bats are dead. There is a metaphor or two scattered throughout the poem. A good personification is the last line of the poem. “When mice with wings can wear a human face”. The most noticeable pattern in the poem is that every two lines, or every stanza, is rhymed at the last syllable and word. They also follow the same pattern throughout the poem.
The meaning of the poem is that vampires can be sneaky and elusive. They can be right in front of our very eyes, and we would think they aren’t there or they could be dead. I think that the author believes that vampires are real. This poem describes their fears of what these creatures can do. Overall, this was a great poem.