No poet has observed animals more accurately than Ted Hughes has done. His depiction of the animals observed is remarkable, vivid, startling, and truthful. He 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.

1. Ted Hughes’ Animal Imagery
Presenter: Hira Mukhtar
Instructor: Prof. Liaqat Masih

2. Ted Hughes
One 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

3. “Imagine what you are writing about. See it
and live it.”
~ Ted Hughes, Poetry in the Making

4. 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

5. Wide Range of Animal in
Hughes’s Poems
Hawk
Thrush
Pike
Jaguar
Skylark
Horse
Crow
Cat
Mouse
Bull
Pig
Otter
Bullfrog
And several others

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. Hawk Roosting
Established 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

10. An Otter
Less 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. The Horses
A different kind of poem
No wild force is depicted
Grand looking animals but
very gentle and passive
“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

17. Hughes’s Animal Poems
Present 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

18. Thank you
for your attention 