Ted Hughes’ idea of revolt in his “The Jaguar”

It will not be excess to say that Edward James Hughes or Ted Hughes in shortly is a scientist of both animal’s and human’s nature. Beginning from “The Jaguar” he writes a lot of poems about animal’s nature. Ted Hughes shows his interest in the animals in the same way that takes them as the representatives of the nature of human beings. It needs to be noted, by way of conclusion, that Hughes’ interest in animals is quite central to his poetic vision. For these animals, the crow, the jaguar, the tomcat, skylark, the hawk, the threshes, the pike, and the horses, all are, in one way or another, representatives of Nature, Nature that once belonged to man but now lies deep-buried in the human Thus, Jaguar of “The Jaguar” is same to all.

The apes in the zoo are yawing and adorning their fleas in the sun. The parrots are shrieking as if they were on fire or strutting like cheap tarts to attract the visitors with nuts. The tiger and the lion, fatigued with indolence, are lying as still as the sun. Curiously enough, the coil in the tail of a boa constrictor is a fossil. All these show that the animals have adopted themselves to the imprisonment and lost their original power and energy. These animals may symbolize the vigor-less human beings in the society who are captives or brought under others’ control, no matter whether it is social, economic, political or cultural, lose their personality, their beliefs and creeds. Sometimes they even quite forget their nature and character and yield to the state of slavery.

On the other side of the picture, the spirit of the jaguar that hurries enraged through the prison darkness after the drills of his eyes on a short fuse is never to be suppressed. Its stare is a strong refusal to acknowledge or to be fettered by the external world. It never experiences boredom and tedium. Its eyes are satisfied to be blind in fire. It is deaf of ear because of “The bang of blood in the brain”. Its stride is expressive of uncontrollable and irrepressible sense of freedom. It seems to be spinning the earth under its feet like a ball or a prayer wheel. This jaguar is a symbol of an idealist revolutionary who does not consider himself to be imprisoned. His rebellious spirit and sense of liberty remain intact. Interpreted thus, the poem teaches us to be conscious of our original power, strength, nature, sense of liberty and will-force and not to yield to anything unlawful and oppressive. So a clear invocation of and ideal revolutionary’s dream and thought is narrated aptly in the poem.

Of course, such interpretations are far-fetched, though there may be enough basis for such interpretations. Superficially read, the poem is a dramatization of the original power and force of the jaguar as well as of the changed features and behavior of some other animals but read analytically, the poem may have a didactic quality to teach.
In fine, I would like to mention that Terry Gifford and Neil Roberts advise, “The Jaguar is not a poem just of observation but of longing and affirmation, particularly in its final lines which broaden out to suggest a human possibility, an exciting possibility but one that entails preserving intact the predatory ferocity, rage, blindness, and deafness of our own nature”.