One simile

The poem of the day is Ted Hughes's The Jaguar, which has already, after 45 minutes, proved itself appropriate and accessible to these students. Here's the poem, with the simile we focused on the most bolded.

The 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.

At first, E. said she felt like the simile showed a moment of peace and calmness compared with the shrieking birds. Indeed it does, but we teased out how Hughes is doing something sneakier here. Beneath the indolence of the tiger and lion, these cats are burning with the potential energy of the sun. M. noticed that they are the center of the universe, probably the central cage at the zoo, and that everyone is revolving around them and looking at them. The sun, pointed out S,, is static, but is boiling and bursting with energy. The smolder, but they are still. Y. built on that, saying that the sun can, at any moment, throw out a ball of fire that would destroy earth. These cats are similarly dangerous, and might jump or growl or attack at any moment, especially, as O., noted, they are caged and trapped against their will. 

Regarding the jaguar, L., reading the line that "his stride is wildernesses of freedom," said "He doesn't belong there." Where does he belong? "On safari!" 

O and N have good comments about how the assonance, the repeated "o" sounds of the second to last line, give the sense of the rolling of the world, through the rolling of the line, and emphasize the length of the world, and of his stride. 

The students will write about this poem on Tuesday or Wednesday. I look forward to reading their interpretations.