Abstract
This paper examines the cohesive use of animal imagery in the poetry of Ted Hughes, exploring how animals serve as metaphors for human nature, violence, power, and the conflict between civilization and instinct. Through close readings of major poems including Hawk Roosting, The Hawk in the Rain, The Thought-Fox, Pike, The Jaguar, Crow poems, Second Glance at a Jaguar, and Moortown Diary, the study demonstrates that Hughes’s poetic language features bold metaphors, echoing language, imagery, and speech rhythms that reflect the beauty and violence of the natural world. The paper argues that Hughes uses animals as allegorical figures to explore themes of power, freedom, self-discovery, and the survival instinct inherent in both the animal and human kingdoms.
Keywords: Ted Hughes, animal imagery, Hawk Roosting, Pike, The Jaguar, Crow, nature poetry
Introduction
Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 - 28 October 1998), popularly known as Ted Hughes, was the youngest child of William Henry Hughes and Edith Farrar Hughes. He was an English poet and a British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. Hughes was a multitalented poet best acknowledged for creating influential poems that feature bold metaphors, echoing language, imagery, and speech rhythms. Hughes’s poetry, according to Seamus Heaney, reflects traits along with “racial memory, animal instinct and poetic imagination all flow into one another with an exact sensuousness.” Animals in the poems of Hughes are metaphor for his views on life. The animals whom Ted Hughes captures in his poems reflect the conflict between violence and tenderness, the manner in which humans strive for ascendancy and success.
Hawk Roosting
The poem written in first person as a dramatic monologue creates a comparison in the reader’s mind between the hawk and an egoistic dictator. Ted Hughes portrays the thought process that goes in the mind of the Hawk and relates it with the mind of every megalomaniac who considers other people around him as of no or little importance. The hawk lives according to the rules designed by him and “No arguments assert” his “right.” This poem shows that this is a world where might is right. The Hawk says in violent chillingly insightful manner, “I kill where I please because it is all mine.” The massive egotism running through the poem has allegorical significance in reference to human beings — unrestrained power in human beings, when twisted and deformed, leads only to tyranny and oppression.
The Thought-Fox
The poem The Thought-Fox is about the journey of writing a poem. At the moment the poet senses the presence of an animal, probably a fox, though the body of this animal is invisible, but it walks its way forward nervously through the dark. The fox that is seen hidden is covered with snow because of the snow the fox’s nose had become cold and damp, twitching moistly and gently. The beautiful “final” nature of the poem allegorically indicates that poets are not in the presence of any untrained spontaneity, any primitive or naive vision. The conflict of sensibility which Hughes unconsciously dramatizes in The Thought-Fox runs through all his poetry.
Pike
In the poem Pike, Hughes explains and introduces the superficial dimensions of the pike. Pike has the killer-instinct that exists right from the hatching of the egg. In this manner Hughes transforms our acquaintance with the pike solely from a material, scientific perspective. The Pike has allegorical significance as an inherent part of man’s basic nature as this violent streak is universal. The human-being also has this killer/survival instinct right after his birth. This instinct is inborn, but the sophistication that he develops is acquired. In the last line the poet is shown as silently engaged in fishing — here, fishing stands as a metaphor of “self-discovery.”
The Jaguar
The poem The Jaguar, written by Ted Hughes, is one of his most famous poems. This poem describes the different types of lifestyles of animals at a zoo and expresses how the animals who roar and bleat in cages feel being trapped. Although the jaguar is caged up, he maintains his kingly sublime. Ted Hughes has a brilliant way of looking into life. He expresses human follies, anger, and hatred through the animal kingdom. The Jaguar is a poem about a fierce animal from the image of which Ted Hughes unearths something about human nature — it is a symbolic poem about any individual who is firm, fierce yet soft at heart in his imagination and strides along the path of the world.
Crow Poems
The origin of Crow grew out of an invitation by Leonard Baskin to make a book which speaks all about crow in a folklore manner. As the protagonist of a book, crow becomes symbol and leads a legendary life. Ted Hughes hides beneath the figure of Crow and continues his journey of exploration into the human psyche, handling the themes of death/rebirth in his poetry. The Crow poems deal with brutal violence, though Hughes never supports violence but believes that it is a kind of necessary psychological amour to ward off anxiety.
Second Glance at a Jaguar and Moortown Diary
The poem Second Glance at a Jaguar from the collection Wodwo (1967) embodies the Jaguar’s restlessness and passion, achieved by loading the lines with verbs to express like “shoving,” “lifting,” “hanging,” “combing,” “hurrying.” Moortown Diary (1989) is a group of thirty-four poems recording Hughes’s experiences at his Devonshire farm, dedicated to the memory of his late father-in-law, Jack Orchard. The poems here are filled with images of sheep and births of lambs and calves, revealing Hughes as a tender observer of nature.
To read Hughes’s poetry is to enter a world dominated by nature, especially by animals. His Noah-like cataloguing of the animal kingdom is of course a further lure to younger readers.
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