What is the theme of the short story Hop Frog by Edgar Allan Poe?
I think that a major theme of this story is, obviously, revenge. Hop Frog becomes angry at the joking king for striking his friend Trippetta and for being humiliated by the King and being forced to drink wine, which was known to have an ill effect upon him. In order to get back at the king and his 7 ministers, Hop Frog comes up with an elaborate plan and murders them in front of their society at a ball. Poe uses irony and puns/wordplay to get the general message across (i.e.”…with no perceptible ill effect, Hop Frog entered at once, and with a spirit, into the plans for the masquerade” Spirit could be seen as wordplay on alcohol, since Hop Frog was just forced to down two entire glasses of it; the constant use of quotation marks around the word “joke” or “jest” imply that the words are not to be taken in a literal sense, but instead, an ironic one). Poe also mentions Caryatides, which are defined as pillars shaped like female prisoners. The fact that these would even be in the Dance
