The Tiger Poem Analise

The poem ‘The Tiger’ by Leslie Norris is about an animal seen by poet in the starry night. The tiger which is locked in a cage. It is presented as pity, sad and caught against his nature. Some of the techniques used by the author are metaphor, repetition and rhyme.
In the first stanza of the poem, the author describes appearance of The tiger. “he stalks in his vivid stripes”. By using effective and descriptive vocabulary the author shows us majestic, grand, but very calm creature, one of the quotes to support this, is “On pads of velvet quiet.” Where velvet brings in mind some soft, luxuries fabric, almost the image of the royalty. The technique used here is a metaphor.
The next two cantos occurs to the natural habitat and behaviour of the tiger. By pointing what the animal should or would do in a usual environment poet makes the image of tiger kept in prison from the fourth stanza even more sad and harsh. It is sad that the cage is very small and the tiger can hardly take a few steps along the length of it. The author also use alliterations to indicate cruelty of the current home of the tiger. By using words as “concrete cell” and “behind bars” poets creates vision of the prison, where from there is no escape.
The other technique use is repetition. At the beginning of the poem, in the quote:“On pads of velvet quiet, In his quiet rage” author uses this technique to show the helplessness of the animal. At the end in the quote: “And stares with his brilliant eyes at the brilliant stars” the author underline the intensity of the feeling of loneliness and longing for the nature.
In the poem the author uses the verbs in continuous tense for example “lurking”,” snarling”, “baring” “terrorising” to brings dramatic effect of the tiger’s situation. They describes actions banned for the creature caught in the Zoo.
The last technique used is a rhyme. It brings the rhythm in the poem and makes the structure of the poem more pleasant (as the subject is not ).
To summarise, the tiger is shown as a scared creature by Leslie and unjustified locked in inappropriately small place. In my opinion tigers should not be kept in such situations as maybe in future they might be let out again but not taught how to behave and, even worse, no taught how to survive in natural accommodations.
By Kasia