The Jaguar

"The Jaguar" is the first animal poem to be published by Hughes. It has excited many readers and
repelled others. The reason for this response is the awareness that the poet is identifying himself
with the Jaguar. It is not a poem which describes an animal but a poem of longing and affirmation.
The poet suggests that man himself has all the elements of a Jaguar — predatory, ferocity, rage,
blindness and deafness of the animal. Hughes never makes the suggestion explicit but implies it. The
poem begins with a comparison of the Jaguar with the apes, the parrots and other animals which are
caged. The apes are found yawning and are content with the fleas. The parrots are shrieking as if
they are unfair. Even the tiger and the lion known for their sinewy strength are fatigued and don't
move. The boa - constrictor's has coiled itself and it looks as though it is more a fossil than a living
animal. The other cages are practically empty and there is nothing but stink emerging from them.
The people who visit the zoo stand mesmerized at a certain object the Jaguar. The Jaguar unlike
another animals looks enraped at being caged although the animal is found "it eye satisfied to be
blind in fire", the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear, it spins within. Just as the visionary has no
bounds for his vision the Jaguar has no bounds. Its gait reflects wilderness of freedom. The world
appears to roll "under the long thrust of his heel". It seems to order the horizons to come to it. The
last lines of the poem with their long stressed syllables make us imagine not only that the Jaguar's
energy turns the world but that with the same action it spurns it. While Blake immortalized his poem
Tioer which symbolized for him energy, Hughes ignores the tiger and the lion and chooses the
Jaguar.