The Kraken - Analysis

Overall impression and tone

The poem projects a slow, monumental calm that shifts into a sudden apocalyptic climax. Its opening lines create a hush of immeasurable depth and time, then the mood changes to awe and finality as the Kraken awakens and dies on the surface. The tone moves from serene, almost scientific description to prophetic grandeur.

Relevant context

Written by Alfred Lord Tennyson in the Victorian era, the poem echoes 19th‑century interests in deep time, natural history, and mythic imagination. The era’s tensions between scientific discovery and romantic awe help shape the poem’s mixture of cataloguing detail and visionary ending.

Main theme: the unconscious and hidden powers

Tennyson uses the abyss to symbolize forces that lie beyond human perception. Phrases like “abysmal sea” and “antient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep” present the Kraken as a latent, colossal presence—an image of the unconscious or repressed magnitude that outlives human notice until a cataclysmic moment.

Main theme: vast time and endurance

The poem emphasizes longevity and geological scale: “millennial growth”, “There hath he lain for ages”. The Kraken’s slumber across epochs contrasts fleeting human history with deep, patient endurance, suggesting both the indifference and continuity of nature.

Main theme: apocalypse and revelation

The closing lines convert the creature’s rise into an eschatological scene: “until the latter fire shall heat the deep”, then it will be “once by man and angels to be seen”. The poem links monstrous emergence with cosmic end—revelation through destruction, where hidden truths appear only at termination.

Symbols and imagery

The Kraken functions as a central symbol of the immense and the unknown; its “shadowy sides” and the “sickly light” suggest partial visibility and alienness. Images like “Huge sponges of millennial growth” and “enormous polypi” create a tableau of prehistoric, indifferent life. The contrast of deep cold and “latter fire” stages a symbolic transition from latent being to terminal revelation—an open question remains whether the final appearance is triumph, tragedy, or simply the natural end of a cycle.

Conclusion

The Kraken is a compressed mythic study of scale, secrecy, and destiny: through rich oceanic imagery and a tonal shift from sleep to apocalypse, Tennyson contemplates forces that outlast humanity and become visible only at the world’s limit. The poem leaves readers with a haunting sense of nature’s immense rhythms and the inevitability of final disclosure.