Ted Hughes’ Animal Imagery

Presenter: Hira Mukhtar

Instructor: Prof. Liaqat Masih

Ted HughesOne of the 20th century’s greatest English

poets

Spent much of his time reading and

rereading all of Shakespeare’s works

Spent most time reading folklore and Yeats’

poems

Called a nature poet

“Imagine what you are writing about. See it

and live it.”~ Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making

According to critics....

No poet has observed animals more

accurately than Ted Hughes has done

Hughes’s depiction of the animals observed

is remarkable, vivid, startling, and truthful

Wide Range of Animal in Hughes’s Poems

Hawk

Thrush

Pike

Jaguar

Skylark

Horse

Crow

Cat

Mouse

Bull

Pig

Otter

Bullfrog

And several others

Animals

World of animals – Hughes’s favourite territory

Original description as well as symbolic

significance of animals

Depiction of animals throws light on human

nature

Hughes’s treatment of the animals is different

Highly poetic

Highly fanciful

Highly symbolic

Highly significant

Highly expressive

Highly illuminating

Highly “modern” both in content and in style

Animal Description

Relates that animal to other creatures and

also to human experiences and human

concepts

Represents the typical stresses and

contradiction of human nature and also of

the Nature

Hawk RoostingEstablished his reputation as a poet of the world

of animals

A hawk’s eye-view of the world

“It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot …..”

Hawk’s own point of view

and consciousness

The hawk becomes a mouthpiece of Nature

An OtterLess a description of an

otter than an invocation

of the spirit of an otter

Otter – The opposite of the hawk

Symbolically,

“crying without answer for his lost paradise”

• Image of the dualism in man – neither wholly

body nor wholly spirit, neither wholly beast nor

wholly angel; yearning for immortal home

The Bull Moses

The original picture of a bull is combined with a

symbolic view of the animal

The human figures in the poem, the speaker and

the farmer, enhance the poem’s interest

The gulf between man and animal

represents the gulf between

civilized man and man’s animal self

Pike

First four stanzas – Description of the animal

Next three stanzas – Pikes can eat each other

when hungry

End of poem – the feelings of terror and awe

because of the “killer” pikes

The Crow Poems

Crow – A trickster

Remains a crow but reaches

human status

A satire on God’s creation of this universe and of

mankind

Mocking at God’s universe and at mankind

The Crow serving as a medium of mockery or satire

The Jaguar and Second Glance at a Jaguar

Jaguar – A fierce beast

“a bang of blood in his brain”

“his stride is wildernesses of freedom”

The jaguar symbolizes Nature in all its wildness,

its fury, its destructiveness, and also its

splendour

The poems have a frightening effect

Thrushes

Thrushes – Terrifying creatures

“bounce and stab,” without

“any indolent procrastinations”

Move very swiftly like a bullet or a shark’s mouth

The uncontrollable energies of Nature are stated

Man appears to be a weak creature by the side of

these energies

The Horses

“They breathed, making no move,

With draped manes and titled hind-hooves,

Making no sound”

 Gentle quality of the non-human world is focused

 The patience and the silence of the horses 

opposes the wildness of the jaguar and the hawk

A different kind of poem

No wild force is depicted

Grand looking animals butvery gentle and passive

Hughes’s Animal PoemsPresent animals as creatures deserving of our 

attention

Each species of animal has unique characteristics

Depict the contrast and similarity between animals 

and mankind

Formidable, awful, spectacular, and fascinating 

display of God’s creatures in a universe which is 

mysterious and unfathomable

Thank youfor your attention