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T. S. EliotThe Song of the Jellicles
Fiction | Poem | Middle Grade | Published in 1939A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Spirituality
The Jellicles’s moonlight dance rituals have a spiritual feeling, but to fully understand the scope of the spiritual themes in the poem, it is important to understand the broader world of cats Eliot created in his poetry. In the musical Cats, the characters focus on the Jellicle choice, which is a ritual the cats perform to decide which one will ascend to the Heaviside layer—the play’s version of heaven. A letter Eliot wrote about ending the poem with the cats ascending to heaven inspired the Heaviside layer.
While Eliot thought of the Jellicle Ball and the Heaviside layer as intertwined, the actual poem feels more pagan than Christian. The moon acts as a kind of conjurer of the Jellicles, waking them from sleep and bringing them out into the night. It even seems to call them to the Heaviside layer, as the cats “wait for the Jellicle Moon” (Line 12), as if it speaks to them the way a deity would.
The cats also seem to have a direct connection to the moon, exemplified most by the line “Jellicle Cats have moonlit eyes” (Line 24). This line connects the cats with the moon in a way no other line does, suggesting the moon's light entrances them. This, along with the image of them dancing under its light, inspires thoughts of Druid or Wiccan witchcraft. The images even bring to mind the cats of ancient Egyptian mythology. Again, the poem makes no mention of these things, but considering Eliot’s vast literary and cultural vocabulary combined with his interest in religion, the connection makes sense.
Whimsy
It’s easy to lose the innocence of a children’s poem when analyzing it, but it is important to remember this is a children’s poem. Similar to poems like Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” (1871), Eliot wants his audience to get joy from the rhythm of his lines, the power of his rhymes, and the whimsical scene he creates with his cats.
The joy and whimsy one feels when reading nursery rhymes or other children’s poetry is hard to describe, but it usually comes from the rhythm of the lines. Eliot uses the repetitive dactyl—one long syllable followed by two short syllables—of “Jellicle” at the beginning of most of the lines to set up the escalating rhythm as he goes. The use of iambic feet after Jellicle also helps create the singsong rhythm of the lines.
More on that and other rhythmic tricks in the subsequent form and meter section.
Social Commentary
As a modernist, Eliot believed the arts had a responsibility to society. He believed that the rhythm of poetry echoed a sort of collective consciousness, and he sought to speak to that rhythm through his writing (Larson, Janet Karsten. “Eliot’s Cats Come out Tonight.” Christian Century, 5 May 1982, p. 534.). Even in a children’s poem, Eliot works to say something about society and to bring people together through rhythm and story.
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats ends with the poem “The Ad-Dressing of Cats.” In this poem, Eliot writes:
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse --
But all may be described in verse (Eliot, T. S. “The Ad-Dressing of Cats.” Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, 1939).
Throughout the book, Eliot introduces many kinds of cats—including prophets, conjurers, and criminals. Eliot models the cats after real groups of people in society. Eliot was intentional in how he constructed his feline world. His poems act as commentary on the society in which he lived. The Jellicles, then, with their pretentious “airs and graces” (Line 11), their days spent preparing for the Jellicle Ball, and their lives of revelry and frolicking are cats of privilege. They are rich cats. They live to enjoy the finest things.
Yet Eliot does not take a critical view of these cats. Instead, he treats them with quirkiness and humor. Eliot presents them with the same kind of mythical romanticism fairy tales reserve for royalty. In this sense, the Jellicle Cats are almost nostalgic visions of a past separate from the brutal reality of the first half of the 20th century.
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By T. S. Eliot
