The Bat by 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

 

Roethke wrote “The Bat” in an attempt to make others see that fearing the unknown is wrong. Roethke went through stages of mental health and because of this he was fired from not one but two different teaching positions. The doctors at the time couldn’t diagnosis him. The school’s feared his outbreaks instead of trying to get him help.

People today fear what they don’t understand. I think that is part of the reason this poem hold so much meaning. People will always fear the unknown. The only way to fix this problem is to educate ourselves. Knowledge is the key. Roethke used the image of the bat because some many do believe the stories of “blood sucking creatures”. The true is the bats are mostly harmless and even benefit humans by eating bugs such as mosquitoes.

  Roethke depicts the bat as whimsical, which isn’t a common portrayal of a bat. The end rhymes create a clear line between each statement. He assumed people that there is no need to fear the bat. Roethke created an abstract diction by choosing words like brushes, amiss, and crazy figure. This subconsciously furthers the notion of false or unclear knowledge verses the truth and fact. He didn’t want humans to fear the bat because it is similar to them, just like he didn’t want himself and other mentally ill people to be feared because they are slightly different. Some of the most gifted individuals in our history were once feared because they were “weird”, “odd” or “different”. These words shouldn’t be used as negative connotations of people things or object s we don’t understand

                I personally think, Roethke just wanted people to try to understand the things they fear. You might be shocked to discover the thing you feared is more like you than you thought.