Cockroach by Marion Copeland

Author:Marion Copeland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Music groups Papa Roach and the Osbournes, illustration by Hungry Dog Studios for Entertainment Weekly (2000).

While the cockroach has had less impact on classical composers and performers, attention must be paid to the libretto Marc Abrahams and Don Kates produced for the sixth annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony in 1996. ‘Lament del Cockroach: a mini-opera for Nobel Laureates and mezzo-sopranos’ features the tragic demise of Thelma Roach who succumbs to bacteria brought to earth by a meteorite from Mars accompanied by music adapted from Wagner. Survivors greet the death of the last cockroach (and of the myth of cockroach survival) with the triumphal music of Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus’.

Finally, there is the suggestive tale told in Australian author Trevor Todd’s young adult novel, The Cockroach that Wrote a Symphony. Teenager Benjy, reluctantly missing outdoor fun with his friends because his music homework is not finished, is startled when a cockroach darts across his desk. About to slam a book on it, he notices something unbelievable – the cockroach is writing a line of music on Benji’s lesson staff. Not unlike Marquis’s archy, this cockroach laboriously gathers a blob of ink at a time with his front legs, then scampers back and forth, shaping note after note. Taking what the cockroach had finished to his music teacher without telling her its source, Benjy and his mother listen entranced as the ‘strong opening chords, and then a beautiful melody . . . flowed over them’.27

Once Miss Bell learns who is writing the music, she approaches a famous conductor who is impressed enough to visit Benjy’s house to see the cockroach composer for himself. Determined to perform the Cockroach Symphony with the National Symphony Orchestra, Sir Peregrin issues a press release. That very night Benjy returns home to find that, just as in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the cleaning lady has crushed the cockroach and thrown him in the dustbin. Although Benjy is thrilled when Sir Peregrin finishes and performs the cockroach’s symphony, its success fails to compensate for the loss of his friend’s company.

The intriguing question, given the many positive associations with the cockroach found in folklore, literature and popular culture is why the cockroach remains the least-loved of all creatures, lowest among the low. On the other hand, it is exactly this ambiguity that sets the cockroach up as satire’s darling, and allows it to continue to question boundaries and set question marks after certainties – exactly what marks the cockroach as the totem animal of all those humans also relegated to the undersides of their cultures despite their virtues and gifts.

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