THE JAGUAR

Ted Hughes
 About the Poet

✘ Born in England
✘ Won a scholarship to Pembrook College,
Cambridge
✘ Served two years in the Royal Air Force before
matriculating.
✘ Studied English, archaeology, and anthropology,
specialising in mythological systems.
✘ Also wrote plays, short stories, and books for
children.
✘ From 1985 to his death he was poet laureate of
England.
✘ In his poetry, Hughes vividly describes the beauty of
the natural world, but celebrates its raw, elemental
energies.

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VOCABULARY

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✘ Strut - To walk in a show-offy or attention-grabbing way.
✘ Cheap tarts - A derogatory British term that can mean either "sex
workers" or "promiscuous women."
✘ Stroller - A person strolling past.
✘ Indolence - Laziness, inactivity.
✘ Boa constrictor - A large snake that kills its prey by squeezing it to
death.
✘ Nursery – A British word for preschool; this might also refer to a
traditional children's playroom/bedroom.
✘ Mesmerized - Transfixed, hypnotized
✘ Fuse -A length of string or wire that, lit on fire, sparks an explosive.
✘ Visionary - Someone with remarkable foresight and imagination.
✘ Stride - A long step
✘ Wildernesses - Areas of land uninhabited by humans.
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 STRUCTURE
✘ Five stanzas of four lines (quatrains). Regular shape mirrors the
physical constraint on the lives of the animals at the zoo: the stanzas
are as boxy as cages. Speaker moves from stanza to stanza like one of
those ‘strollers’ passing from one cage to the next.
✘ Poem sometimes creates tension by enjambing between stanzas,
suggesting the animals' deep-rooted desire to break free (e.g., "but
there's no cage to him // More than to the visionary his cell" in the last
two stanzas).
✘ Effectively divides into two distinct sections. First two stanzas depict
the speaker walking idly around the zoo before finding the jaguar. The
next three show the jaguar as awe-inspiring, majestic, and frightening.
This creates a clear contrast between the depressing "indolence" of
most of the animals and the hypnotic power of the jaguar.

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ANALYSIS

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 TITLE
✘ Animals occupied a central role throughout Hughes's
poetry, where they symbolically reflect the human
psyche. The jaguar, for instance, is a kind of primal force
made flesh. Implicitly values such energies—and,
indeed, suggests that modern life often neglects them.
✘ The poem also perhaps draws parallels with Rainer
Maria Rilke's poem "The Panther." but whereas Rilke's
big cat is despairing and "weary," the jaguar seems full
of life and anger.
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TONE
✘ Excitement
✘ Empathy
✘ Wonder
✘ Respect MOOD
✘ Fascination
✘ Admiration
✘ Awe

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 SUMMARY 1

The apes look bored as they inspect their fleas in the sunshine.
The parrots, meanwhile, scream as though they've been set alight
— either that, or they parade like prostitutes hoping passers-by
will throw them a snack. Bored of being bored, tigers and lions lie
as stationary as the sun itself.
A coiled-up snake looks like a fossil. All the cages seem deserted,
or they carry the stench of sleeping animals from the straw-laden
floor. The scene is so harmless, it might as well be painted on the
walls of a preschool.

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 SUMMARY 2
But whoever decides to rush past all of these boring sights will
soon come upon a cage in front of which stands a big group of
people who seem hypnotized or like dreaming children. The
crowd watches a jaguar furiously rushing about, his bright eyes
piercing through his dark cage, like the lit end of a short, powerful
fuse.
The jaguar isn't bored. His eyes are happy to be blinded by such
fiery rage, and his ears are deafened by the pulse of blood in his
brain. He jumps from bar to bar, but he acts as if he's not in a cage
at all.

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 SUMMARY 3

Instead, he's like a mystic locked in a small room who

nevertheless remains free through the power of the mind.
The jaguar's long steps convey the freedom of being in
the wild. The planet itself seems to spin under his strong
steps, the new days rising to meet him.

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 Worship/pay close attention to,
These magnificent creatures Stanza 1 their own fleas, which apparently
seem totally bored as they Drawn-out sounds offer their main form of
leisurely groom each other in evoke a dull entertainment in captivity,
the sunshine. atmosphere.

1 The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun. Their cries are grating
and reflect the birds’
sheer terror at being
2 The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut caged.

3 Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.

Moves to two of the most
4 Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion fearsome creatures in the
world, these animals are
They have been reduced to ‘cheap’ known for their killer instinct,
entertainment. These wild animals are mere yet the inability to simply be
amusements for people wandering idly past. wild has drained them of their
vitality.

Parrots aren’t any more impressive than apathetic apes.

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The full-stop caesura after "sun"
also brings the line to a sudden Stanza 2 This snake, too, is utterly
drained by its captivity.
halt, mirroring the big cats'
inertia.
emphasizing just how utterly devoid of life this place seems.

5 Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil

6 Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or

7 Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.

8 It might be painted on a nursery wall.

Poem uses another full-stop caesura, again
By breaking the line off in the middle of a clause, bringing the poem to halt right in the middle
enjambment creates a sense of anticipation; readers of a line and evoking the dreary, lazy
expect some sort of movement and activity (like a atmosphere of the zoo—a place, it seems,
roar, perhaps), which then doesn't happen. that takes all the wildness out of the wild.
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 This signals that the preamble is
done; something is about to arrive
Stanza 3
that differs from the bored animals
listed in stanzas 1 and 2.

9 But who runs like the rest past these arrives

The jaguar is like a hypnotist who has the entire crowd under his spell.
10 At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,

11 As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged

12 Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

While the other creatures act as if
From line 9's "But" to line 13's "fuse"—is one long sentence filled
they have all the time in the world,
with enjambment. Whereas the poem's first two stanzas were
the jaguar acts with impulse and
heavily endstopped (and moved slowly as a result), the poem
urgency, as though he has
here moves swiftly down the page in a way that mirrors the
somewhere he needs to be. In short,
jaguar's own sudden movements.
he retains his wildness.

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 seems to the speaker to be driven
by something totally primal and Stanza 4 The sounds of the words themselves
are like an exciting, and perhaps
untamed. frightening, pulse in the reader's ear.

There may physically

13 On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom— be "bars" in his way,
but, the speaker says,
his wild nature remains
14 The eye satisfied to be blind in fire, untamed and
uncontrolled.

15 By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—

16 He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

These metaphors mean that he sees nothing by his own This acrobatic spinning
fearsome instincts, can't hear anything other than the blood clearly contrasts with the
pulsing through his veins. In other words, he is driven sleepy verbs that described
entirely by something ferocious, wild, and instinctual. the apes, tigers, and lions.
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 Each step or leap the jaguar
takes, in other words, is freedom Stanza 5 Taking the jaguar as a
symbol, this final image
itself. His very movements
speaks once again to the
embody what it means to be wild
idea that no physical
and free.
boundaries can contain
17 More than to the visionary his cell: the human mind. That's
because, through the
imagination, people can
18 His stride is wildernesses of freedom: bring the world to them.

19 The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.

20 Over the cage floor the horizons come.

This comparison adds a new layer to the poem, The jaguar doesn't just make the cage his dominion; the
suggesting that the jaguar here is actually more whole world "rolls under the long thrust of his heel." Instead of
than just a jaguar. Instead, readers might get the the jaguar moving across the earth, readers can imagine the
sense that this fierce animal is meant to symbolize earth rolling like a ball beneath the jaguar's powerful steps.
the power of the mind and/or human imagination This image suggests that the animal possesses a kind of
to resist imprisonment and captivity. power over the world even as it tries to keep him captive.

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THEMES

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 Captivity vs Freedom

Set at a zoo, the poem describes the animals as looking bored,

tired, and utterly defeated by their imprisonment. The one
exception is a ferocious jaguar, whose refusal to recognize his
"cage" makes him a mesmerizing, dominant presence. Captivity
and confinement, the poem ultimately suggests, are suffocating
and draining, and the speaker thus celebrates those who refuse
to let their wild natures be tamed.

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 Captivity vs Freedom

Taken at face value, the jaguar's uncompromising power and majesty

might suggest that humanity can never truly dominate the natural
world. And the speaker might also be metaphorically celebrating
those kinds of people who refuse to let their true natures, their sense
of wildness and freedom, ever be tamed.

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 Captivity vs Freedom

But it’s also worth noting that the jaguar here is male and that the
speaker implicitly scoffs at animals’ failure to exhibit traits linked with
stereotypical masculinity: the tigers are lying about instead of hunting,
for example, and the birds “strut” like “cheap” sex workers—something
the speaker clearly finds pathetic and distasteful. The speaker also
seems to bristle at the thought of children, coolly dismissing the
whole scene as fit for a “nursery.”

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 Captivity vs Freedom

As such, the poem might subtly suggest that captivity (perhaps a

metaphor for domestic life) threatens to sap men specifically of their
virility and power. In any case, the speaker clearly finds confinement
draining and degrading—and encourages resistance.

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 The Power of the Imagination

This animal, in addition to representing an untameable

force of nature, might also symbolize the power of the
human imagination. In this reading of the poem, the
jaguar's boldness and ability to dominate his surroundings
speaks to the potential of the human mind to overcome its
own boundaries and restraints. The poem might suggest
that the mind, like this fierce animal, can never be
contained.

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 The Power of the Imagination

In addition to representing an untameable force of nature,

the jaguar might also symbolize the power of the human
imagination. The jaguar's boldness and ability to dominate
his surroundings speaks to the potential of the human
mind to overcome its own boundaries and restraints. The
poem might suggest that the mind, like this fierce animal,
can never be contained.

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 The Power of the Imagination

The jaguar's pride and inner strength are unmatched. The way
the jaguar dominates his environment denies the cage its very
purpose: to capture and contain, subdue and tame. The speaker
thus compares the jaguar to a "visionary" in "his cell." A visionary
is someone filled with wisdom, original ideas, thoughts about
the future, etc. A visionary imagination doesn't require physical
freedom because it's imagination, something that exists only
within the mind.

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 The Power of the Imagination

Just as the world seems to bow to the jaguar, the poem suggests
that the human mind can conjure inner worlds unfettered by
outside influence. The poem seems to marvel at the fact that this is
possible, portraying the human mind as something primal, strong,
and, above all, free.

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FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

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 ALLITERATION
• Line 2: “strut”
• Line 3: “tarts,” “stroller”
• Line 5: “still,” “sun,” “constrictor’s coil”
• Line 6: “Cage,” “cage,” “seems”
• Line 7: “Stinks,” “sleepers,” “straw”
• Line 9: “runs,” “rest,” “arrives”
• Line 10: “cage,” “crowd,” “stands,” “stares”
• Line 12: “darkness,” “drills”
• Line 13: “fierce fuse,” “boredom”
• Line 14: “be blind”
• Line 15: “By,” “bang,” “blood,” “brain”
• Line 20: “cage,” “come”

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 ANTHROPOMORPHISM

The attribution of human characteristics or behaviour to a

god, animal, or object.

Where Anthropomorphism appears in the poem:

• Lines 1-5
• Lines 11-20

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 ASSONANCE

• Line 1: “yawn,” “adore”

• Line 4: “tiger,” “lion”
• Line 6: “seems”
• Line 7: “ sleepers,” “breathing”
• Line 9: “arrives”
• Line 10: “mesmerized”
• Line 14: “eye satisfied,” “blind,” “fire”
• Line 19: “under,” “thrust”

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 ASYNDETON

The omission or absence of a conjunction between parts

of a sentence, as in I came, I saw, I conquered.

• Lines 10-10: “stands, stares, / mesmerized,”

• Lines 14-15: “The eye satisfied to be blind in fire, / By the
bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear —”
• Lines 19-20: “The world rolls under the long thrust of his
heel, / Over the cage floor the horizons come.”

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 CAESURA
A caesura is a pause that occurs within a line of poetry, usually marked by
some form of punctuation such as a period, comma, ellipsis, or dash.

• Line 2: “fire, or”

• Line 4: “indolence, tiger”
• Line 5: “sun. The”
• Line 6: “fossil. Cage,” “empty, or”
• Line 10: “stands, stares, mesmerized,”
• Line 11: “dream, at”
• Line 13: “fuse. Not”
• Line 16: “bars, but”
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 CONSONANCE

• Line 2: “strut” • Line 11: “jaguar,” “enraged”

• Line 3: “tarts to attract,” “stroller,” • Line 12: “darkness,” “drills”
“nut” • Line 13: “fierce fuse”
• Line 4: “indolence,” “and lion” • Line 14: “be blind”
• Line 5: “still,” “sun,” • Line 15: “By,” “bang,” “blood,” “brain”
“boa-constrictor’s coil”
• Line 16: “bars”
• Line 6: “Cage after cage,” “empty”
• Line 18: “stride,” “wildernesses”
• Line 7: “Stinks of sleepers,” “straw”
• Line 19: “world rolls,” “long,” “heel”
• Line 9: “runs,” “rest,” “arrives”
• Line 20: “cage,” “floor,” “come”
• Line 10: “cage,” “crowd,” “stands,
stares,”
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 METAPHOR
• Lines 5-6: “ The boa-constrictor’s coil / Is a fossil.”
• Lines 11-13: “at a jaguar hurrying enraged / Through prison
darkness after the drills of his eyes / On a short fierce fuse.”
• Lines 14-15: “The eye satisfied to be blind in fire, / By the bang of
blood in the brain deaf the ear —”
• Line 18: “His stride is wildernesses of freedom:”
• Lines 19-20: “The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel, /
Over the cage floor the horizons come.”

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 SIMILE

• Lines 2-3: “The parrots shriek as if they were

on fire, or strut / Like cheap tarts to attract the
stroller with the nut.”
• Lines 4-5: “Fatigued with indolence, tiger and
lion / Lie still as the sun.”
• Lines 10-11: “the crowd stands, stares,
mesmerized, / As a child at a dream,”

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 SIMILE

• Lines 2-3: “The parrots shriek as if they were

on fire, or strut / Like cheap tarts to attract the
stroller with the nut.”
• Lines 4-5: “Fatigued with indolence, tiger and
lion / Lie still as the sun.”
• Lines 10-11: “the crowd stands, stares,
mesmerized, / As a child at a dream,”

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