The story “Circus Cat Alley Cat” is a vivid character sketch and description of Anna, the protagonist of the story. Comparisons between the “nanny” and a circus cat or an alley cat are noticeable throughout the story.
I think that one of the less obvious themes is imagination. Anna’s fascinating and mysterious personality sparked up the children’s imagination. A plain brooch would transform her white uniform into a bright and colourful stage costume.
The fact that the nanny never spoke about her past experiences in the circus, did not stop the children from fantasizing about her death-defying acts; in fact it allowed their imagination to wander as they pictured the nanny standing on the backs of roaring lions with a ferocious tiger draped around her neck. The children’s imagination creates such vivid pictures that the reader is not certain whether they are just imagined or if they are true.
I think that the children are also compared to circus cats, trained and ruled by their “master’. At the beginning of the story we read about one of the children’s fear of the nanny. The child looks with terror through the bamboo cage. I think the cage symbolises the nanny’s control over the children and their “imprisonment”, which can be compared to the way the cat -trainer has power over his cats. The fear of the children is comparable to the way animals may be frightened of the cat trainer and his whip. When the nanny came into the children’s room with a skipping rope the children felt the trainer had arrived to practice the circus acts and order them to jump and do other things. They pictured themselves as the Nanny’s circus cats. When she fed them they imagined they were eating hunks of sanguineous meat. Any object in her hand immediately transformed into a lashing whip.
The Essay on Black Cat Narrator One Story
In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Black Cat", there are many examples of ironies to which we as readers may not be fully aware of. I have listed a few of these ironies that I thought were relevant in the story's plot and one, which I thought was the most significant. Ironies such as the narrator's upbringing as having the "docility and humanity of disposition" (102. 13), and "having fondness ...
Two important themes of the story are imprisonment and hidden identity. Anna, who had been used to a poor, rough life, was taken into a proper home but in a way, imprisoned. She was trapped in the sweet “nanny” role she had been given which did not fit her. She had to be careful with the way she acted and spoke, to reveal nothing of her true personality. Anna was made to hide her rough character behind the polite and lovable image of a “nanny”. Her new family tried to eliminate her wild habits. She was taught how to be courteous and motherly but Anna always remained a “wild cat”. We are given examples of this in the story, when spurts of wildness give away Anna’s true identity.
No matter how much she was taught to be “tame”, Anna slammed windows shut and rattled their knobs.
In this same way, felines in the circus are forced to become tame and gentle. They are also imprisoned. Their savage, rough nature is hidden behind their obedience and the colourful clothes and ornaments they are ”decorated” with.
This leads into the next theme: domestication or better, attempted domestication.
The nanny’s new family tried to domesticate her. This is another way in which the nanny is compared to a circus cat. Both of them are trained into being gentle. Although the animals are forced to show tameness, their true spirit remains wild (like in the nanny’s case).
Poverty could be considered another theme in the story.
Anna is compared to an alley cat in the part of her life she spent in poverty, like a dirty alley cat foraging for food in the streets and begging. She didn’t have enough to eat and wandered around the streets looking for food, with no true destination, just like a hungry cat.
The person telling the story says “And I had a vivid picture of Anna in a great cage, gnawing, gnawing upon a great, bleeding hunk of flesh, Anna snarling at the people who came to snatch it from her, Anna throwing back her mane and giving a great roar of triumph, Anna the queen of the circus cats, Anna the circus cat…”
The Term Paper on Jay Gatsby as Representation of Magic in the Great Gatsby
Magicians are known for the tricks that they play on the eyes. What often seems like magic, turns out to be just a careful flick of the wrist. In the book The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzerald, the magician is compared to the character of Jay Gatsby. The magician motif is used among other tools to prove that appearance is not always reality. The higher class throws sophisticated and glamorous ...
I think this sentence is full of symbolism. The fact that Anna is gnawing at a great piece of meat (that could represent her husband) shows the savage aspect of the cat-woman that had always been in her. Her wild cat-like behaviour is emphasised in the first part of the quoted paragraph where she is seen as a sanguinary creature tearing at a piece of freshly killed animal. In my eyes the piece of meat and the fact that she is so savagely attacking it, symbolise her rough, wild personality, her true identity which was often hidden. When the author says Anna snarls at the people who want to take the piece of meat away, I think she means Anna refuses to let her wild nature be taken from her. She roars triumphantly because despite all the attempts of domestication, she has emerged victorious by remaining untamed.
