Mort aux Chats by Peter Porter
At the first sight, and as far as the subject is concerned, the poem „Mort aux Chats“ by Peter Porter is a prejudiced total enumeration of insults and accusations of cats, as generalization and no provision of any valid evidence are to be found. The narrator can clearly be distinguished from the poet, since the narrator’s words are satiric and his points exaggerated and ridiculous („I blame my headache and my plants dying on to cats“). Creating a speaker, the poet makes the reader explore the ludicrousness and abstruseness of the thoughts expressed in the poem on his own. While the narrator uses short phrases in the beginning („Cats pollute the air“), towards the middle and the end his sentences expand to questions („Why should they insist on their own language, who needs to purr to make his point?“) and exclamatory slogans against cats („Death to all cats!“).
There is a lot of evidence of the poet wanting to display how propaganda works and what effects it has, as well as to illustrate the ridiculousness of the prejudiced, stereotyped behaviour and way of thinking of National Socialists, especially of those who were discriminating against and persecuting Jews in power in Germany between the First and the Second World War („They stabbed us in the back last time.“, „They don’t deserve a capital C“, „When I dream of God I see a Massacre of Cats“). However, this intellectual link is made use of to pursue another idea, namely that prejudice, even the everyday-life one, will lead to intolerance of minorities, racism, xenophobia and eventually genocide („Death to all cats!“, „There will be no more cats“), which can be identified as the theme of the poem.
In my view, the first-person narrator can be interpreted ambiguously. On the one hand, he seems to be significantly obsessed with the doctrine of National Socialism, since he uses „facts“ German anti-Semites used to quote to justify their behaviour and attitude, however odd, incorrect, unreasonable or grotesque they were. The quote of the stab-in-the-back legend „they stabbed us in the back last time“ provides evidence of this, since great parts of Germany’s population were of the opinion that Germany had lost the First World War not for military and economic reasons, but because of defeatism and treason to the Fatherland. Moreover, the word „Jew“ was no longer permitted to be written with capital letters, as suggested in the utterance „They don’t deserve a capital C except at the beginning of a sentence.“ Furthermore, Jewish art and artists were considered „degenerated“, which the narrator’s words „There have never been any great artists who were cats“ imply. In addition, German National Socialists dreamt of „The Rule of (them) [..[ (that) should last a thousand years!“. The act of killing cats, or, as in this case, Jews, is also of religious significance to the narrator, moreover, it is almost a sacred calling to him („When I dream of God, I see a Massacre of Cats“). Anti-Judaists state that the Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ and that they have committed deicide, which is responsible for hatred and prejudice against Jews. The narrator could share their prejudice and therefore their hatred. Furthermore, the speaker seems to be sure of the death of cats, as he says: „There will be no more cats.“, just in the opening line, as if he was sure about it and as if their extermination was inevitable.
