Centipede By Rita Dove Summary

The poem, “Centipede” by Rita Dove, dramatizes the small fears overcoming the larger fears we may be experiencing in our life. The speaker of the poem, a daughter, tells us a story of her being in the basement and being frightened by a centipede. Without attention to detail the poem can be read as a one layered poem whose theme would be; little girls fear bugs. The theme in the poem is actually; the small things in life can easily distract oneself of the bigger problems occurring around them.

The poem has no punctuation, which could tell us the speaker is a young child, who had just experienced this frightening situation and still has the adrenaline in her voice, causing the child to speed through her words allowing no punctuation within her speech. Even though there is no attention to gender within the poem, I infer that the speaker is a girl because she is holding on to her father’s arm and is frightened by an insect.

In the first two line of the poem we are told by the speaker that there was a storm, but now it has passed on, causing the daughter and the father to grab a flashlight and go to the basement.

This storm must have been a strong because it has clearly cut the power off from the house. The tone of the speaker in the first two lines sound surprisingly calm. There had been a storm that had just passed their town, which could have been life threatening, but the speaker seems to have a very calm routinely tone to her voice. The tone of the speaker may be calm for now, but the setting of the speaker heading to the basement with the power out is a known fright, especially to a little

girl.
The imagery and puns start to role in the third and fourth line. As the audience reads through the poem, at glance we get the imagery of old untouched chairs that are stacked and create shadows. Not so coincidently, centipedes also have many legs. The unflattering description of the chairs can also be a reference to how the speaker viewed the insect. The chairs were nested in the poem, creating shadows that resemble the legs connected to the centipede. With a deeper look into the description of the chairs, the audience can connect the passing storm to the chairs that were once used in the house. Both the chairs and the storms original presence had been forgotten.
Finally, the last to lines of the poem clarify who is in the basement and who the speaker is. The speaker also reviles that her and her father had gone to the basement to check the fusebox. But to the speaker’s surprise, the father shows his daughter a centipede, which ultimately frightens the speaker. These last two lines revile the theme and meaning behind the poem.
Even though the speaker had just gone through a storm, which was probably frightening at the time, she is now frightened by something else, something so small. Once something passes from our lives no matter how big they were, or how frightened we were of them at the time, once they are gone, they are gone. The speaker forgot all about the power being out, and the reason she went with her father to the basement because of the insect that had just frightened her.