A clear introduction to both poems, showing a link between them.
Good use of textual detail throughout.
Textual detail continues.
42 Helpful consideration of structure, figures of speech and diction, with examples.
Close attention to the poem’s sound effects.
Useful discourse marker.
SAMPLE ESSAY
Cambridge International AS Level Literature in English
Essay title: Several poems in your Ted Hughes selection are about animals. Referring to two poems, discuss how they explore this subject. The two animal poems I have chosen are both by Ted Hughes and both are about cats: the first a domestic cat who spends his days sleeping inside and his nights roaming around outside; and the second a wild member of the cat family, a jaguar, who is in a cage at the zoo. Although at first sight their lives are very different, they share a kind of fierce intensity which in the poet’s eyes, lift s them beyond the everyday world and physical context in which they spend their lives. The structure of the poem Esther’s Tomcatt introduces the cat asleep in the house with vivid, visual similes, looking like an old rough matt or like a bundle of old rope and iron, but when he wakes in the evening another identity appears – one with legendary qualities: fangs fine as a lady’s needle; eyes, green as ringstones. The poet tells a legend about a fierce tomcat before describing this particular cat’s nocturnal activities: fighting, killing and mating, always somehow managing to escape danger. The final stanza images the cat on the rooftops, his mind on the moon stalking over the round world as it sleeps. This structure emphasises the range of environments related to the cat: its apparently innocent domestic life, sleeping during the day; its historical antecedents – the legendary story of the vicious tomcat that attacked a knight; the present cat’s aggression and dominance; and ending with an image which suggests its mysterious, universal qualities; crying out and asserting its individuality while the world sleeps. These environments are contrasted throughout. Far from being an ordinary old pussy cat, it is something quite different: The poet’s language is very rich in similes and metaphors which enhance the image of the cat: the diction off old rope and iron sounds tough but uncouth; as soon as his glowing eyes open the image of jewels is used, and his fangs are like a lady’s needle, a medieval image which links with the legend of the cat and the knight in the next stanza, a legend which is somehow made more real in the reference to an actual place, ‘Barnborough’, and the fact that the bloodstain is still there after hundreds of years. The onomatopoeic word grallochs (which means disembowels) sums up the vicious nature of the tomcat’s aggression; his superiority over any dog is unquestionable. The poet uses four-line stanzas which vary in length between eight and ten syllables, though the longest line goes to 11 syllables – appropriately the line describing the knight trying desperately to fight off the cat. There are occasional rhymes such as bright, knight and bite, which link the images of the cat in sound as well as meaning, biting the knight with his sharp bright teeth; and there are a number of half-rhymes such as quiett and pullet, moon and men, the first emphasising the cat’s slyness, the second expanding the range of the cat’s activities at night. Hughes makes much use of enjambments throughout the poem which give weight to the words which follow the pause, most notably in the gap between stanzas 4 and 5 which climaxes with the phrase Is unkillable, an explicit statement of fact – no metaphor here, though perhaps some hyperbole (exaggeration). Esther’s Tomcatt is an ironical title, because it reminds us that though we think we own animals they are individuals with their own integrity, their own lives and perhaps a significance beyond the normal. The Jaguarr also has a structure which moves from the everyday world – here the zoo – to the globe itself in the final stanza. Contrasts between