The Lesson of the Moth

“the lesson of the moth” is relatively simple in its narrative and diction. Unlike many of the modernist poetry that forms the basis of Archy’s poetic style, “the lesson of the moth” bears none of the complexity and occlusion associated with modernist works. The poem’s lexical and grammatical simplicity is partly explained by the poem’s persona-speaker (Archy, a cockroach who in a previous life was a free-verse poet) and partly by Marquis’s professional context (newspapers are written for general consumption and use common diction). Neither the poem’s simplicity nor its diminutive persona, however, preclude the work from engaging very difficult and complicated questions. “the lesson of the moth” raises questions about the meaning of life, the purpose of art, and the importance of happiness.

The bulk of the poem’s engagement with these heavy questions occurs in the third stanza, when the moth gives his reply to Archy. However, the way Marquis frames the moth’s response gives important clues as to its role in the poem's larger context. The most significant of these clues is the poem’s title, which suggests from the beginning that the moth’s response should be understood as didactic.