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T. S. EliotA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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.
By T. S. Eliot
Ash Wednesday
T. S. Eliot
East Coker
T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets
T. S. Eliot
Journey of the Magi
T. S. Eliot
Little Gidding
T. S. Eliot
Mr. Mistoffelees
T. S. Eliot
Murder in the Cathedral
T. S. Eliot
Portrait of a Lady
T. S. Eliot
Preludes
T. S. Eliot
Rhapsody On A Windy Night
T. S. Eliot
The Cocktail Party
T. S. Eliot
The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot
The Waste Land
T. S. Eliot
Tradition and the Individual Talent
T. S. Eliot