Fantasy and Fact: the Kraken

Fantasy and Fact: The Kraken

For some reason, Tennyson was intrigued by the idea of the Kraken, perhaps having seen some of the images below when he was young? Anyway, he wrote the poem as if the monster were real.

These images are taken from Wikipedia which maintains that they are in the public domain and not, therefore, subject to copyright.
They seem to show a giant octopus and are widely used to illustrate articles about the Kraken, although the earliest references to the creature do not mention tentacles at all. /

What information can students discover about the Kraken? They may have come across it in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and be quite surprised to see a poem by a Victorian writer descibing it! Here are a few web addresses which can start them off:

(NB describes Tennyson's poem as an ‘epic’ - which it is not!)

(fairly reliable, though with the odd spelling error)

(more interesting than might appear at first)

Wikipedia is also worth reading and do ask students to follow up 'Kraken in popular culture', which includes this delightful tall story:

Captain Alfred Bulltop Stormalong was a literally larger than life seaman who grew to be one of the tallest seaman ever, and eventually built a gigantic ship to accommodate his own proportions. On a voyage to China at age 13, Stormalong's ship encountered a Kraken, which took hold of the ship's keel. Stormalong dove into the water and tied the creature's arms into knots. As Stormalong grew older, he eventually encountered the kraken again, this time successfully drawing the beast into a whirlpool from which it never escaped.

They might also like to investigate a few related Norse monsters such as the serpent Jormungandr:

The last meeting between the serpent and Thor is predicted to occur at Ragnarök, when Jörmungandr will come out of the ocean and poison the sky. Thor will kill Jörmungandr and then walk nine paces before falling dead, having been intoxicated by the serpent's poison

Activities

Fact and Fiction: how do you tell?

Ask students to consider the information they gather and see (a) how it is phrased and (b) what evidence is given. The mythical dream site, for instance, has a number of statements which sound as if they are fact, though here and there phrases such as ‘was described by’ establish some distance. Ask students to look out for phrases which make the Kraken sound real and phrases which make it clear that it is someone’s opinion/rumour/story. Which web-sites seem to be the most reliable?

Tall stories

Ask students to

• expand one of the summaries above into a full length story or
• create their own tall story featuring a sea monster.

The poem

Ask students to look at a word processed version of the poem and mark it (using highlighter pen or any other facility such as underline, size, font etc) to show words indicating size/depth, time, light/dark, quiet/noise.

An example follows to be used as you wish, together with a glossary matching activity.

size/depth
time
light/dark
quiet/noise / Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Farfarbeneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvadedsleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintestsunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennialgrowth and height;
And faraway into the sicklylight,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lainforages, and will lie
battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latterfire shall heat the deep;
Thenonce by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die / NOTES:
Link the explanations on the left with the words in the poem:
Flit about.
Grotto or cave.
Like an abyss, a huge deep hole or chasm.
Part of the sea closest to the surface.
Sift out.
Taking thousands of years to grow.
Touchstones translates this as octopuses, but a thesaurus says: ‘a single-cavity sea invertebrate cnidarian in its sedentary stage that attaches to a rock at one end of its cylindrical body and has a tentacled mouth at the other end’. / Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die

© Teachit 2009