In Poe’s short story, “Hop Frog,” revenge drives the main plot and is Hop-Frog’s main reason for carrying out his actions. The king is notorious for loving jokes, but in the most horrible way that only a fat statistical king would love jokes. Hop frog is considered a fool, a cripple, and a dwarf by everyone in the kingdom and for years both Hop Frog and a girl named Trippetta have been mistreated by the king and his seven ministers. Being mistreated …show more content…
Through using symbolism, Poe saturates his characters with emotion and character. Hop Frog’s teeth show his frustration and growing intolerance on his captivity and abuse. Hop Frog’s teeth are used to symbolize key events that happen in the story. Without Poe’s use of symbolism in his stories it wouldn’t have the same grim intensity which his characters exist in. And it wouldn’t be very entertaining. Another example of symbolism found in the short story Hop Frog is the way Poe symbolizes the king in the story. In the opening description of the king is that he would have “preferred Rabelais ' 'Gargantua ' to the 'Zadig ' of Voltaire,” a giant king with a large capacity for food and drinks, which shows that the king has a lack of control and animal desires. His seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments for being jokers. They also took after the king, “in being fat, corpulent, oily men, as well inimitable jokers.” The king reacts without consequence, constrained by theirs animal urges and desires, and is nothing more than their biological limits to their body. In addition, Poe uses the costumes to show how the king and his ministers are beasts. Hop Frog uses the ourang-outangs costumes to represent the king and his ministers as basal beasts with no conscience. Hop Frog shows the king and his minister to be animals that have a thought, lust or desire and act upon it …show more content…
In the short “Hop Frog” Poe’s use of irony keeps the reader interested in the short on a much deeper level. An example of Poe’s irony in the short story is the appearance of Hop Frog. Hop Frog is fat, a dwarf, and crippled, so you would expect him to be as athletic as he turns out to be. Biologically Hop Frog is a freak of nature. His means of movement was “interjectional gait---something between a leap and a wiggle,” thus the name Hop Frog. To obtain this motion he had to go through “great pain and difficulty.” Hop Frog has “a set of large, powerful, and very repulsive teeth.” His arms are not balanced with his body right, so his arms have a “prodigious muscular power.” He used his arms a lot and was able to “perform many feats of wonderful dexterity,” that he most certainly “resembled a squirrel, or a small monkey, than a frog.” Hop Frog cannot tolerate wine like other can. One sip of wine for Hop Frog is like drinking 5 bottles of wine. The story says that Hop Frog is from “some barbarous region,” but for the king Hop Frog is just a “triplicate treasure” for the king to make fun of, entertain himself, or laugh at. If a man is no greater than his body features, then Hop Frog is a freak, and his body is limited. Although, Hop Frog proves this is not true. By using his arms, Hop Frog can do outstanding “feats of wonderful dexterity.” Hop Frog is able to overcome the effects that the wine had on him