Hop-Frog
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| Author | Edgar Allan Poe |
|---|---|
| Original title | 'Hop-Frog; Or, the Eight Chained Ourangoutangs' |
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Horror |
| Publisher | Flag of Our Union |
| Released | March 1849 |
Hop-Frog is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1849.
Contents |
[edit] Plot Summary
The court jester Hop-Frog, "being also a dwarf and a cripple", was the much-abused "fool" of the unnamed king. This king had an insatiable sense of humor; "he seemed to live only for joking." Both Hop-Frog and his wife, Trippetta, have been stolen from their homeland and are essentially slaves.
Hop-Frog has severe reactions to alcohol and, though the king knows this, he forces Hop-Frog to consume several goblets full. Trippetta begs him to stop and, in front of seven members of his cabinet council, strikes her with a goblet. The powerful men laugh at the expense of their two servants and ask Hop-Frog for advice on an upcoming masquerade. He suggests some very realistic costumes for the men of orangutans chained together. The men love the idea of scaring their guests and agree to wear tight-fitting shirts and pants, then saturated with tar and covered with flax. In full costume, the men were then chained together and lead into the "grand saloon" of masqueraders just after midnight.
As predicted, the guests were shocked and many believed the men to be real "beasts of some kind in reality, if not precisely ourang-outangs." Many rushed for the doors to escape but Hop-Frog had insisted the doors be locked and the keys given to him. Amidst the chaose, Hop-Frog attached a chain from the ceiling to the chain linked around the men in costume. The chain then pulled them up via pulley (presumably by Tripetta, who had arranged the room as such) far above the crowd. Hop-Frog puts on a spectacle so that the guests presume "the whole matter as a well-contrived pleasantry." He claims he can identify the culprits by looking at them up close. He climbs up to their level, and holds a torch close to the men's faces. They quickly catch fire. "In less than half a minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid the shrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror-stricken, and without the power to render them the slightest assistance." Finally, before escaping through a sky-light with Trippetta to their home country, Hop-Frog identifies the men in costume:
I now see distinctly... what manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and his seven privy-councillors - a king who does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl, and his seven councillors who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester - and this is my last jest.
[edit] Analysis
The story can be categorized as one of Poe's revenge tales, along with The Cask of Amontillado. Just as in that story, the murderer seems to get away without punishment for his deeds. Ironically, the victim in The Cask of Amontillado wears motley whereas in Hop-Frog, the murderer is wearing it.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue also concerns an orangutan, although in that story the ape is real.
Biographer Kenneth Silverman claims the tale (written toward the end of Poe's life) was somewhat autobiographical. The jester Hop-Frog, like Poe, was "kidnapped from home and presented to the king" (his wealthy foster father John Allan), "bearing a name not given in baptism but 'conferred upon him'... and susceptible to wine... when insulted and forced to drink becomes insane with rage" [1].
The climax of the story, in which a dancer coated in pitch is set alight, may have been inspired by a historical event: the Bal des Ardents of 1393, a ball at which Charles VI of France and five other lords made up as chained wild men in pitch and cloth were accidentally set alight by a torch carried by the King's brother. (Four of the men died in the fire; Charles was saved.)
[edit] Publication History
The tale first appeared in the March 17, 1849 edition of Flag of Our Union, a Boston-based newspaper. It originally carried the full title Hop Frog; Or, The Eight Chained Ourangoutangs.
[edit] Adaptations
- Hop-Frog's earliest film adaptation was in 1910 by French director Henry Desfontaines.
- A 1926 symphony by Eugene Cools was inspired by and named after Hop-Frog.
- A plot similar to Hop-Frog was used as a side plot in Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death (1964). The film starred Vincent Price. Hop-Frog is played by a little person but his wife Tripetta is played by a young girl overdubbed with an older woman's voice.
[edit] References
- ^ Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. Harper Perennial, 1991. p. 407.
| Edgar Allan Poe |
|---|
| Poems |
|
Poetry (1824) • O, Tempora! O, Mores! (1825) • Song (1827) • Imitation (1827) • Spirits of the Dead (1827) • A Dream (1827) • Stanzas (1827) • Tamerlane (1827) • The Lake (1827) • Evening Star (1827) • A Dream (1827) • To Margaret (1827) • The Happiest Day (1827) • To The River —— (1828) (1828) • Romance (1829) • Fairy-Land (1829) • To Science (1829) • To Isaac Lea (1829) • Al Aaraaf (1829) • An Acrostic (1829) • Elizabeth (1829) • To Helen (1831) • A Paean (1831) • The Sleeper (1831) • The City in the Sea (1831) • The Valley of Unrest (1831) • Israfel (1831) • The Coliseum (1833) • Enigma (1833) • Fanny (1833) • Serenade (1833) • Song of Triumph from Epimanes (1833) • Latin Hymn (1833) • To One in Paradise (1833) • Hymn (1835) • Politician (1835) • May Queen Ode (1836) • Spiritual Song (1836) • Bridal Ballad (1837) • To Zante (1837) • The Haunted Palace (1839) • Silence, a Sonnet (1839) • Lines on Joe Locke (1843) • The Conqueror Worm (1843) • Lenore (1843) • Eulalie (1843) • A Campaign Song (1844) • Dream-Land (1844) • Impromptu. To Kate Carol (1845) • To Frances (1845) • The Divine Right of Kings (1845) • Epigram for Wall Street (1845) • The Raven (1845) • A Valentine (1846) • Beloved Physician (1847) • An Enigma (1847) • Deep in Earth (1847) • Ulalume (1847) • Lines on Ale (1848) • To Marie Louise (1848) • Evangeline (1848) • Eldorado (1849) • For Annie (1849) • The Bells (1849) • Annabel Lee (1849) • A Dream Within A Dream (1850) • Alone (1875) |
| Tales |
| Metzengerstein (1832) • The Duc De L'Omelette (1832) • A Tale of Jerusalem (1832) • Loss of Breath (1832) • Bon-Bon (1832) • MS. Found in a Bottle (1833) • The Assignation (1834) • Berenice (1835) • Morella (1835) • Lionizing (1835) • The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1835) • King Pest (1835) • Shadow - A Parable (1835) • Four Beasts in One - The Homo-Cameleopard (1836) • Mystification (1837) • Silence - A Fable (1837) • Ligeia (1838) • How to Write a Blackwood Article (1838) • A Predicament (1838) • The Devil in the Belfry (1839) • The Man That Was Used Up (1839) • The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) • William Wilson (1839) • The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1839) • Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling (1840) • The Business Man (1840) • The Man of the Crowd (1840) • The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) • A Descent into the Maelstrom (1841) • The Island of the Fay (1841) • The Colloquy of Monos and Una (1841) • Never Bet the Devil Your Head (1841) • Eleonora (1841) • Three Sundays in a Week (1841) • The Oval Portrait (1842) • The Masque of the Red Death (1842) • The Landscape Garden (1842) • The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) • The Pit and the Pendulum (1842) • The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) • The Gold-Bug (1843) • The Black Cat (1843) • Diddling (1843) • The Spectacles (1844) • A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (1844) • The Premature Burial (1844) • Mesmeric Revelation (1844) • The Oblong Box (1844) • The Angel of the Odd (1844) • Thou Art the Man (1844) • The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (1844) • The Purloined Letter (1844) • The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (1845) • Some Words with a Mummy (1845) • The Power of Words (1845) • The Imp of the Perverse (1845) • The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845) • The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845) • The Sphinx (1846) • The Cask of Amontillado (1846) • The Domain of Arnheim (1847) • Mellonta Tauta (1849) • Hop-Frog (1849) • Von Kempelen and His Discovery (1849) • X-ing a Paragrab (1849) • Landor's Cottage (1849) |
| Other Works |
| Essays: Maelzel's Chess Player (1836) • The Daguerreotype (1840) • The Philosophy of Furniture (1840) • A Few Words on Secret Writing (1841) • The Rationale of Verse (1843) • Morning on the Wissahiccon (1844) • Old English Poetry (1845) • The Philosophy of Composition (1846) • The Poetic Principle (1846) • Eureka (1848) Hoaxes: • The Balloon-Hoax (1844) Novels: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1837) • The Journal of Julius Rodman (1840) Plays: Scenes From 'Politian' (1835) Other: The Conchologist's First Book (1839) • The Light-House (1849) |
