Commentary Notes for "Jaguar" by Ted Hughes

Good, detailed notes are a vital starting point to oral or written commentary. Examiners urge candidates to spend at least a quarter of exam time creating notes and planning their commentaries or responses. This is time well-spent. In this article, we show what form these notes might take for a poem by Ted Hughes.

Note: This is not a model of how you would approach and conduct an interactive oral commentary! You can ask us for more details.

Jaguar

The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion

Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.

But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.




Subject: 

• The poem dwells on a particular animal, the jaguar, whose power is registered largely through making comparison with other, 'inferior' creatures. 

Important aspects of content:

• The opening two stanzas of the poem focus on animals other than the jaguar, which are depicted as lazy, disengaged or conceited. The apes seem to spend their time picking fleas and tiger and lion “Lie still as the sun,” in a passive, nonchalant state. The parrots are compared to “cheap tarts” in their rather desperate attempts to attract the attention of “the stroller with the nut” and the comparison of the boa constrictor's coil to “a fossil” seems to represent the seemingly empty, shallow existence of all these creatures. They seem reduced to a purely biological condition, uninspiring, without energy and without any sense of character.

• The introduction of the jaguar in stanza three represents a dramatic point of contrast. The crowd is “mesmerised,” compared to a “child at a dream” as the people watch a creature that seems everything the aforementioned animals are not. The phrases “hurrying enraged / Through prison darkness” and “He spins from the bars” convey the jaguar's energy and restlessness, as well as providing him with an emotional life in “the drills of his eyes / On a short fierce fuse.” The jaguar is portrayed with a kind of vitality and spirit that the cage it is in almost fails to contain. Hughes writes, “his stride is a wilderness of freedom” and in the line “The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel” his power is presented such that he seems almost to have dominion over the whole world.

• The poem makes use of the setting of the zoo and its cages, as well as the anonymous human crowd to reinforce the individuality of the jaguar. In all respects the creature is set apart. The poem becomes an attempt on the part of the narrator to write himself into the 'life' of the jaguar, to imaginatively interact with its physical, almost metaphysical presence. In this way, the poem is both objective description and more subjective, imaginative celebration. 

• The language of the poem is rich and detailed. Diction is chosen carefully to communicate the physical characteristics of each creature. Verbs such as “yawn”, “shriek” , “hurrying” and “spins” actively depict the essential character of each animal, and these are reinforced with adjectives such as “breathing”, ”fierce” and “blind”. Both human and animal worlds are described in very tangible ways, so that we can feel, hear and see them. 

• The structure is regular in its four line stanzas, and as we move through the poem so we move from one cage to the next until, like the crowd, we are asked to stop in front of the jaguar. Lines are a mixture of end-stopped and run-on so that there is a sense of organization, as well as fluidity in the lines. The speaker comments with an almost scientific precision on what he sees, and yet allows himself moments of more spontaneous expression in response, for instance, to more unpredictable traits of the animals.

• There is a host of literary elements to the poem. Hughes makes use of figurative language and imagery throughout. The “shriek” of the parrots is compared to “fire”, tiger and lion “Lie still as the sun” and the crowd stands “As a child at a dream”. The similes reveal the speaker's imaginative operation as he seeks to find a language through which to describe these animals. This sense of empathy really takes off when he comes to the jaguar. The “drills of his eyes” in the “prison darkness”, for example, use metaphor to capture the the creature's sinister, determined nature. A the end of the poem, the phrase “Over the cage floor the horizons come” suggests that the cage no longer exists, and the jaguar becomes one with the wilderness. There is considerable visual and aural imagery in the poem's exploration of the physicality of each animal.

• Other literary features worthy of comment might include the use of features of sound. There is alliteration in the phrases “bang of blood in the brain” and “Stinks of sleepers”, and in “prison … drills” and “world rolls ...long”. These examples each illustrate the way the poem seeks to describe the animals as vividly and as 'real' as possible, and thereby once again convey the speaker's imaginative connection with the creatures. 

• Finally, the tone of the poem varies as the speaker moves from one animal to the next. Monosyllabic diction in the earlier part of the poem conveys the speaker's sense of boredom and lack of interest in the first group of animals, but by the time he gets to the jaguar the rhythm of the lines picks up and more complex, polysyllabic diction gives expression to the vitality of the jaguar. He seems to regard the animal with wonder and admiration, as well as almost a sense of fear in response to the jaguar's power and potential. The superlative expressions in the last stanza, where he is “More than “ the cell that seeks to contain him, elevate the jaguar's status to the point where the speaker's imagination and the jaguar itself are almost united at the end of the poem. It is as if the rest of the world has ceased to exist. 

From these notes, some thoughts of a possible commentary thesis might be emerging. See if you can complete the two below and offer a third:

a. This poem elevates the status of the jaguar above all other creatures, including humans. Its central concern is ...

b. The poem's main strength is its use of imagery and figurative diction to communicate ...

c. (your thesis) ...

Now use these notes to create an effective, high-scoring commentary!

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