“The Mosquito” wasn’t D.H. Lawrence’s only work concerning mosquitoes; along with references to mosquitoes in his other works he wrote the short poem “The Mosquito Knows:”
The mosquito knows full well, small as he is he’s a beast of prey. but after all he only takes his bellyful, he doesn’t put my blood in the bank. As in the poem “The Mosquito,” he seems somewhat admiring of mosquitoes in general. He seems to be conveying in this short poem that although the mosquito is an irritant he holds no grudge against it as the mosquito only takes the blood it needs to survive and doesn’t hoard blood unnecessarily. As also occurs in his poem “The Mosquito,” D.H. Lawrence does get some of his facts about mosquitoes wrong. I’m not completely sure and I wasn’t able to find a source to confirm whether or not he was metaphorically addressing the mosquito as male in “The Mosquito Knows” but male mosquitoes don’t actually suck blood. That beloved trait is only the provenance of female mosquitoes. On the other hand, it might have changed the tone of the poem too much to include the factually accurate pronouns (Lawrence & Ellis, 2002). |