It is a curious mixture of revenge, horror, and spectacle, about a dwarf who exacts spectacular brutal vengeance on a cruel monarch. The story was first published in March ; by the end of the year, Poe would be dead.
Hop-Frog and Trippetta have grown close, thanks to their shared status as slaves at the royal court, and look out for each other. When Trippetta begs with the king to leave her friend alone, the king violently pushes her to the floor, and then furiously throws wine in her face. Hop-Frog becomes quietly angry at this, and hatches a plan for revenge on the king and his fat, evil ministers.
To prepare them for this jest, Hop-Frog gets the men tarred and coated with flax to suggest the fur of the orangutan, and then chains them up. They then make their way into the main chamber, chained together, much to the shock and amusement of the guests present at court. Hop-Frog then has them chained to the ceiling, and proceeds to clamber up and pretend to examine them with his torch.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, Edgar was the second of three children. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Search review text. Muhtasin Fuad. Hop Frog by Edgar Allan Poe This short story is about a dwarf taken from his homeland and became a king's jester.
But the king and his ministers enjoy bullying him. And when this bullying became intolerable for the dwarf, he made a terrifying jest to revenge. This story is so brutal and creepy.
Undoubtedly it's one of my favorite short stories by Poe. Macabre tale. Estupendo relato. Poe tiene la capacidad de con muy poco decir mucho. Great story. In a few pages, Poe realizes a true metaphor of the power exercised by the powerful over the weak and of revenge. Poe has the ability to with very little say a lot. Glenn Russell. Love and Revenge — among the most intense, powerful, all-consuming passions in the entire range of human experience. And, as to the variety of jokes the king most enjoyed, well, the coarser the better, more specifically, coarse jokes that made fun, nay, humiliated and degraded others, and, to add more spice to his fun, if such humiliation and degradation mixed with a good dose of sadism, well, now that would really and truly be funny.
And, for even greater kicks and jollies, the king also kept a second dwarf, a graceful young girl by the name of Trippetta. I will make a man of you. You are supposed to have escaped, en masse , from your keepers.
Your majesty cannot conceive the effect produced, at a masquerade, by eight chained ourang-outangs, imagined to be real ones by most of the company; and rushing in with savage cries, among the crowd of delicately and gorgeously habited men and women. The contrast is inimitable! His mode of equipping the party as ourang-outangs was very simple, but effective enough for his purposes. The animals in question had, at the epoch of my story, very rarely been seen in any part of the civilized world; and as the imitations made by the dwarf were sufficiently beast-like and more than sufficiently hideous, their truthfulness to nature was thus thought to be secured.
The king and his ministers were first encased in tight-fitting stockinet shirts and drawers. They were then saturated with tar. At this stage of the process, some one of the party suggested feathers; but the suggestion was at once overruled by the dwarf, who soon convinced the eight, by ocular demonstration, that the hair of such a brute as the ourang-outang was much more efficiently represented by flax. A thick coating of the latter was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar.
A long chain was now procured. First, it was passed about the waist of the king, and tied, then about another of the party, and also tied; then about all successively, in the same manner. When this chaining arrangement was complete, and the party stood as far apart from each other as possible, they formed a circle; and to make all things appear natural, Hop-Frog passed the residue of the chain in two diameters, at right angles, across the circle, after the fashion adopted, at the present day, by those who capture Chimpanzees, or other large apes, in Borneo.
The grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place, was a circular room, very lofty, and receiving the light of the sun only through a single window at top. At night the season for which the apartment was especially designed it was illuminated principally by a large chandelier, depending by a chain from the centre of the sky-light, and lowered, or elevated, by means of a counter-balance as usual; but in order not to look unsightly this latter passed outside the cupola and over the roof.
The arrangements of the room had been left to Trippetta's superintendence; but, in some particulars, it seems, she had been guided by the calmer judgment of her friend the dwarf. At his suggestion it was that, on this occasion, the chandelier was removed. Its waxen drippings which, in weather so warm, it was quite impossible to prevent would have been seriously detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests, who, on account of the crowded state of the saloon, could not all be expected to keep from out its centre; that is to say, from under the chandelier.
Additional sconces were set in various parts of the hall, out of the war, and a flambeau , emitting sweet odor, was placed in the right hand of each of the Caryatides that stood against the wall -- some fifty or sixty altogether. The eight ourang-outangs, taking Hop-Frog's advice, waited patiently until midnight when the room was thoroughly filled with masqueraders before making their appearance.
No sooner had the clock ceased striking, however, than they rushed, or rather rolled in, all together -- for the impediments of their chains caused most of the party to fall, and all to stumble as they entered. The excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious , and filled the heart of the king with glee.
As had been anticipated, there were not a few of the guests who supposed the ferocious-looking creatures to be beasts of some kind in reality, if not precisely ourang-outangs. Many of the women swooned with affright; and had not the king taken the precaution to exclude all weapons from the saloon, his party might soon have expiated their frolic in their blood. As it was, a general rush was made for the doors; but the king had ordered them to be locked immediately upon his entrance; and, at the dwarf's suggestion, the keys had been deposited with him.
While the tumult was at its height, and each masquerader attentive only to his own safety for, in fact, there was much real danger from the pressure of the excited crowd , the chain by which the chandelier ordinarily hung, and which had been drawn up on its removal, might have been seen very gradually to descend, until its hooked extremity came within three feet of the floor.
Soon after this, the king and his seven friends having reeled about the hall in all directions, found themselves, at length, in its centre, and, of course, in immediate contact with the chain.
While they were thus situated, the dwarf, who had followed noiselessly at their heels, inciting them to keep up the commotion, took hold of their own chain at the intersection of the two portions which crossed the circle diametrically and at right angles. Here, with the rapidity of thought, he inserted the hook from which the chandelier had been wont to depend; and, in an instant, by some unseen agency, the chandelier-chain was drawn so far upward as to take the hook out of reach, and, as an inevitable consequence, to drag the ourang-outangs together in close connection, and face to face.
The masqueraders, by this time, had recovered, in some measure, from their alarm; and, beginning to regard the whole matter as a well-contrived pleasantry, set up a loud shout of laughter at the predicament of the apes. I fancy I know them. If I can only get a good look at them, I can soon tell who they are.
Hop-Frog, clinging to the chain as it rose, still maintained his relative position in respect to the eight maskers, and still as if nothing were the matter continued to thrust his torch down toward them, as though endeavoring to discover who they were. So thoroughly astonished was the whole company at this ascent, that a dead silence, of about a minute's duration, ensued. The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The Oval Portrait. The Philosophy of Composition. The Pit and the Pendulum. The Premature Burial.
The Purloined Letter. The Raven. The Tell-Tale Heart. William Wilson.
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