Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

This poem is written in four stanzas, each with two sets of end-rhyming couplets. The speaker of the story was a nephew or niece of Aunt Jennifer who has observed her and her embroidery of tigers. Using abstract imagery, the speaker describes the embroidery screen that the tiger's prance around as "bright topaz denizens of a world of green." Alliteration is used to describe Jennifer's "fluttering fingers." There are many symbols in this poem. "The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band" was a symbol that they didn't have a very happy marriage and he was very controlling of her. "Her terrified hands" are symbolic of the fear and defeat she experienced throughout life. The fearless tigers are symbolic of what she has always wished to be, in control and unafraid. Aunt Jennifer escapes her miserable reality by embroidering tigers. In the eyes of the speaker, the tigers will go on prancing unafraid, which will carry on the unfulfilled desires of his aunt.