jueves, 11 de mayo de 2017

Essay of "Tige in the Menagerie"

The poem "Tiger in the Menagerie" written by Emma Jone, is about a tiger who enters a managerie making people ask themeselves how or when he got into. The author uses a variety of resources to make this poem mysterious, such us the description of the tiger, the use of metaphors and all the interpretatios the reader can choose to undersand the poem.
In the first stanza, it already appears a sense of mystery by starting with "No one could say how the tiger got into the menagerie". This line makes the reader think why people couldn't say how he got into, wanting to know the answer.
Then, the author writes one long sentence, with a lot of metaphors in it, making the readers ask themeselves "Where is she going or trying to prove by writing so much?". For example, one sentence, in fact, lasts four of the seven stanzas in the poem, starting from "At night the bars of the cage and the stripes of the tiger" until "One clear orange eye that walked into the menagerie". This last line is very misterious because you can interpratate it in many forms: the first one, the one I choose to interpret, may be is describing the change of the tiger's mood from an upset one since he wasn't free, trapped inside the cage, to a happy one, as he got free. And the other one, the "clear orange eye" we could interpret this as the eye illuminated by the sunrise as it it daytime.
However, before that line, there were three more talking about a dream of the tiger, a verg confusing dream with, again, a lot of interpretation: "And they walked together in their dreams so long/ through the long colonnade/ that sheds its fretwork to the Indian main". Clearly, it is a metaphor making the poem more mysterious, as it is a very intriguing dream, where, in my opinion, I understood that the tiger's (represented by a man) life is getting apart as he walked besides the woman (that's why there is a "They" in the line) to the Indian Ocean, which will drowned him.
"No one could say how the tiger got out in thr menagerie". The sentence is an anaphora, being repetead in two occasions, but with another question to answer. The mystery continues.
Finally, the poem ends with "When the tiger came inside to wait". This produces a feeling of wanting to know what is happening next, as it finished in a mysterious way, with an open ending.
To conclude, "Tiger in the Menagerie" gave me an impression of reflexion by the way I interpreted it: a man (the tiger) trying to follow his dreams but being trapped with a possesive woman (the cage in the menagerie) and only getting free of her will be thr only way to achieve his goals in life. Without doubts, this poem has a strong moral of not allowding anyone to stop what you dream of, depending on the way you understood it.

1 comentario:

  1. Well done, Flor!!
    Your essay does answer the question now, in each of its paragraphs and in different ways. You are totally on the right track when it comes to essay-writing.
    I still feel there is something not clear in the 4th paragraph, when you present your interpretation of what the tiger represents as a symbol. I think this is just because you say "the tiger´s (represented by a man) life" when you should say "the tiger (who could be a symbol of a passionate man). All the same, this point becomes clear in your conclusion, where you express your ideas properly.
    Congrats!
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