Like
some of his predecessors Ted Hughes, one of the most commanding figures in the
literary circle of English poetry, used images as a symbol to point out the
evils in society. Ted Hughes was different in employing images as compared to
other classical poets, because he used images for inspiration, while others
used just for symbolical representation.
Ted
Hughes from his childhood was deeply involved in the psyche of animals. He has
known it very well. Most of his animal imagery represented barbarism, the proud
nature of humans, and violence. He used animals as metaphors and symbols, but
there is a lot of enjambment found in his poetry. He used different animal
images like a hawk, fox, horse, bull, mouse, and cat, and so on. He was famous
for his unusual difficult word combination to give a simple message. The
textual references proved that he was the only poet who employed animal images
almost in all his works. For instance, in ‘The Thought-Fox’ one of the most
famous poems by Auden, is full of literary taste with a lot of run-on and image
of a fox. He used the image of a fox to show the act of writing and
inspiration. He described the physique of a fox in these lines. “It enters the
dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The
poet presents the setting of nature, like the forest and it was a much darkened
night. He has a lot of ideas in his mind like a forest but unable to jot them
down. He employs the image of a fox, which becomes an inspirational act for his
writing. The sky is starless and he notices someone is alive and coming towards
him. ‘Cold, delicately as the dark snow a fox's nose touches twigs, leaf, basically,
he imagines all this scenario. ‘Through the window, I see no star: Something
more near’ in the beginning, the poet has no clear-cut idea to write his words.
Ted Hughes, in an interview, added his words like ‘I had written nothing for a
year or so but that night. I wrote in a few minutes the…poem: the first
"animal" poem I ever wrote.’ The distant stimulations of the poem are
likened to the stirs of an animal – a fox, whose physique is indistinguishable,
but which feels its way forward anxiously through the dusky understory. The
poet deliberately keeps the physique of the fox hidden to show that ideas
coming into his mind gradually. Like the other poems, The Thought-Fox is a
highly symbolic poem. For instance, the fox symbolizes inspiration, eyes of the
fox for ideas, stars for guide, and darkness for the depth of the poet’s ideas.
He makes the relationship between human and the animal/nature. Ted Hughes’
poetry is labeled as realistic because of the depiction of a society in a very
artistic way. Apart from this poem he also uses images almost in all his
poetry. Let’s look at a short glimpse of one or two more poems from our
syllabus to clear the idea.
In
the poem That Morning, the poet employed the images of salmon and bears to
portray to hypocrite nature among the predators. The theme of violence is
vividly represented through images. Bears having cruel nature, eat salmon that
led to the end of the narrator’s journey. “Eating pierced salmon off their
talons. So we found the end of our journey.” In Hawk’s Monologue, he used hawk
as a symbol to portray the barbaric mindset of oppressors and dictators who can
do anything for their happiness. “Now I hold Creation in my foot. I kill where
I please because it is all mine” In short, the answer can be summed up in these
words that Hughes was a big literary figure of the 20th century and famous for
his symbolic representation of violence in society. Almost, in all his poems he
used different images of animals for symbolic purposes. The world remembers him
as an animal poet.
