ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Stevens uses the jar as a metaphor for mankind and its creations in an otherwise non-human world. The final two lines of the first stanza and the opening two lines of the second describe how society subjugates everything else in the eyes of people within that society.

Detailed explanation-2: -Note how the placing of the jar on top of the hill means that the wilderness – the natural world – has to grow around the jar, and that, in the end, nature loses its wildness. The jar seems to infect everything around it, and removes the very wildness that makes the natural world what it is.

Detailed explanation-3: -In the poem, an unnamed speaker places a jar on a hill in Tennessee. As the natural world continues to grow around the jar, the speaker declares that the object becomes a kind of king of the landscape, forcing the surrounding wilderness to rise to meet it.

Detailed explanation-4: -Stevens also uses imagery, irony, and symbolism. In anecdote of the jar, the jar is a symbol for imagination and thought. The forest and landscape is described to give us a feel for what is happening. Irony is then used when the jar that seemed relatively unimportant, come to dominate.