He Feels the Power of the Past Behind Him: Tennyson’s The Kraken

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was known for his writing, being named Poet Laureate, deemed a Lord and then a Baron, and making thousands of pounds a year (587). Anyway you look at it, the man had it set for life. Some of his poetry, especially the poetry included in this book, is dark and sad. In his poem, The Kraken, Tennyson illuminates the darkness of the sea for a quick look at the mythical sea beast that leaves the reader more sad than afraid.

Tennyson begins the poem by describing the decent into the darkness. His choice of words alone gives the reader a dark and foreboding chill, as he sends us “[b]elow the thunders of the upper deep; / Far, far beneath the abysmal sea” (1-2). These “thunders” serve as the gates to the deep where the beast sleeps, in a place that is even worse than the “abysmal sea.” So even before we reach our destination, the reader is given a set of words that are uneasy. The creature he is describing lives somewhere buried far from the human eye where we are supposed to fear it. From the beginning, Tennyson gives this creature horrible dwelling place for “[h]is ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep” (3). The Kraken, something that we should fear, lives quite an uninteresting life. Caged in the deep of the ocean, he has a “dreamless” sleep forever. Tennyson has taken this huge mythical beast that is to be feared and has turned it into nothing more than a sad bump on a log “[b]attening upon huge seaworms in his sleep” (12). He has turned a god of the sea into a lowly creature that is destined to sleep on the bottom of the sea and get fat.

Tennyson maintains the creatures sheer power, however, by having the only thing that can kill it the end of time. Tennyson writes that “the latter fire shall heat the deep” (13). The end of days is the only event that can disturb this creature’s slumber and “[t]hen once by man and angels to be seen, / In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die” (14-15). Tennyson makes this creature out to be something that wants nothing from us. The beast is now a being that would never want to harm man, for he is in a hell of his own.

By the end of the poem, Tennyson has described an awful event that leaves the reader wanting to comfort the poor beast rather than run from him. He is destined to sleep in the bowels of the sea in a place far worse than anyone can imagine; a place where the real threats that are even past the “sickly light” will never venture to (7). Tennyson easily sways the reader with powerful words like “thunders,” “abysmal,” “shadowy,” and “sickly,” that slowly degrades the mythical, powerful beast of the sea. The Kraken, a creature known for its power and destruction, is portrayed as a giant nothing. The only time the kraken is to be seen, even by God and the angels, it would seem, is his dying day: the day the earth is destroyed.