Ted Hughes' conception of nature is marked by a recognition of violence and aggression that reflects the mood of his era. He highlights the darker, violent aspects of nature unlike Wordsworth. Hughes' poetry depicts different forms of violence through animal imagery - poems like Pike show the brutality and ferocity in nature as pike fish kill their own kind. Bayonet Charge depicts the gory, violent realities of war in contrast to the typical glorification of war. Hughes uses birds and fish to symbolize complex issues of power, authority, and violence in countries like England. His portrayal of the macabre in nature reflects the post-war depression and alienation of his time.

1. Q. Ted Hughes conception of Nature is marked by a recognition of
violence and aggression that corresponds with the general mood of age.
Discuss.
Ted Hughes was a poet Laureate of Great Britain. He was in a cusp of time Modern and Post
modern. He was a traditional poet as well as he moved away from traditional modes of
expression. A newspaper headline in 1984 announced Ted Hughes a “Poetic voice of blood and
guts”.
In his writings Hughes has experimented with stylistic aspects of modern era like semantic
deviation, dramatic deviation, and condense imagery. He lived in the West Yorkshire which is
the area of untamed nature and area of laborers while Words Worth’s area is refined. Ted
discards the refined mannerism and refined intellectualism. Unlike other poets who have made
people to find the ways of escapism and live an illusionary life through their poetry, he has
confined the brutal, cruel and violent nature of his era in his poetry.
His poetry is not easily understood like that of his popular predecessors who expressed
nature as a healer, nurse, and guardian. Hughes’ poetic version was of Pantheism; it is a reality
that reveals god’s reality. Unlike Wordsworth, Hughes highlighted the darker aspects of nature.
Wordsworth’s pantheism was of an ideal state; his poetry captures the beautiful aspects of nature
but Hughes celebrates the macabre realities of natural world.
Violence and brutal aggression is certainly one of the dominant themes in the poetry of Ted
Hughes. He is fascinated by violence; all kinds of violence—violence in love as well as in
hatred, violence in the arena, violence in the jungle, violence in a battle, and violence in the
form of murder and sudden death.

2. The theme of violence and aggression can be located in the animal poems of Hughes. Like
Pike, depicts the brutality, ferocity and the violence which cannot be separated from the natural
world. In Pike, it has been told that pike-fish are “killers from the egg” (L-3), they vital instinct
of their nature is killing. A pike-fish kills and eat up one of its own tribe if it cannot get anything
else to satisfy its hunger “And indeed they spare nobody,” (L-22), it really makes no distinction
in appetite. No poet like Hughes has incarcerated the murderousness of Nature with such effect
in his poems. M.L. Rosenthal says, “Hughes’s view of Nature is Nazi, not Words Worthian”,
Then another poem Bayonet Charge depicts nastiness and violence in the warfare. The
verses like “a green hedge that dazzled with rifle fire” (L-3, 4) and “bullets smacking the belly
out of the air” (L-5) portrays that wars have a darker side to them. War is something gory. Ted
has highlighted the natural fear of soldier in a war. Later in the poem a soldier has been
visualized as “He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,” (L-19) and forgetting
“king, honour, human dignity, etcetera” (L-20). Hughes unlike other poets demonstrates the
unusual and ignored feelings of self preservation of a soldier. Self preservation has been shown
as natural instinct to soldier like other humans. Wars have always been penned in the sense of
glorification but Ted has portrayed the other side of picture. In the end of poem soldier’s fear
reached at such a climax which leads him to run. In this poem the death has been depicted as
heroic as well as tragic; it arises pity, grief in the cover of violence, cruelty and aggression.
One more aspect of violence in Ted’s poems is violence as an expression of identity. He has
illustrated violence as a pure expression of spirit, violence as an assertion of identity. In this
connection, the closing lines of the poem Pike are significant. The pond where the narrator in this
poem fished was “as deep as England” (L-34). This pond assumed pikes “too immense to stir”
(L-35), and its immense size, arouse the fear in fisher’s mind. A darkness released by the

3. darkness of the night seemed to him to be rising slowly towards him. In these lines, the darkness
is expressed through the rapacious pike. The narrator’s dream here is a dream of violence. This is
not without a basis because the England people have always been more aggressive and war-lik.
Hughes’s use of birds and fish to deal with issues are as complex as the history and use of
power, authority, and violence. In The Eagle the brutal nature of a hungry eagle has been
portrayed which underlines the reality of Great Britain’s war-like nature. England like Eagle
attacked at its prey with cruelty and meanness. In the poem as “His spread fingers measure a
heave” (L-7) gave expression of aggressiveness of eagle apparently but hideously it is the
portrayal of Britain’s behaviour in World wars.
Hughes’ depiction of macabre and horrid realities in his poems is the result of Post-War
depression and frustration. Ted’s subjective view of nature shows the aspect of alienation in the
Post-War World. His use of wild animals shows his own depressed and disturbed nature as he
was blamed by the people for his wife’s death. He uses voracious animals as his subjects. These
poems are to remind humans that nature is not always our friend no matter how much we try to
help it by cutting pollution. Through the use of animal imagery Hughes’ has revealed the
malignant nature of humans.