Primates such as monkeys and orangutans serve as a prominent motif in this short story. The king and his ministers, for example, wear orangutan costumes to the masquerade in the hopes of terrifying the audience. Additionally, Hop-Frog himself is, despite his frog-like name, frequently compared to a monkey in his movements. Describing his characteristic form of movement, which is a result of his disability, the narrator states that:
[A]lthough Hop-Frog, through the distortion of his legs, could move only with great pain and difficulty along a road or floor, the prodigious muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon his arms, by way of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs, enabled him to perform many feats of wonderful dexterity, where trees or ropes were in question, or anything eke to climb. At such exercises he certainly much more resembled a squirrel, or a small monkey, than a frog.
The narrator compares Hop-Frog to a “squirrel” and a “small monkey” in his mannerisms. Because of a disability, which makes it difficult for him to move his legs, his arms are very powerful and permit him to “perform many feats of wonderful dexterity” in a manner resembling a monkey. Later, when he demonstrates this “dexterity” before the masquerade guests after tying up the king and his ministers to the ceiling, the narrator states that:
Here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to the wall; when, seizing a flambeau from one of the Caryatides, he returned, as he went, to the centre of the room—leaped, with the agility of a monkey, upon the king’s head—and thence clambered a few feet up the chain—holding down the torch to examine the group of ourang-outangs, and still screaming: “I shall soon find out who they are!”
Again, Hop-Frog is described as having the “agility of a monkey,” which allows him to leap great distances and climb up ropes as if they were tree branches. This primate motif underscores the contrast between the king and his men, who are large and cumbersome, to the surprisingly quick and nimble Hop-Frog, who outmaneuvers them despite his subordinate position in court.
