The Panther- Figurative Language, Medaphor

This poem illustrates how dreadful death can be when it is expected. For the man in the cell, is compared to a man battling a raging panther in a closed cage. The man in the cell is condemned to death, like the man pitted against the tiger in a cage. So, the man and the Panther dance around the cage. This is like the mind of the prisoner at war with itself to try to except what is about to happen to him. While death is inevitable, both of the men try everything they can to extend their sentence even longer, because they know that what lay beyond the moment of thought, is far worse that the short term situation. This metaphor is successful because of the similarities drawn, out of the mist of the deeply contrasting ideas. Panthers, and prisoners are not often compared successfully, but at the end of this poem, the reader is not uncomfortable with this odd comparison at all, because Rilke drawls the right comparison while excluding others.