DUAL NATURE OF VIOLENCE AND DIVIDED SELF OF MAN IN THE POEMS OF TED HUGHES

Year 2015, Volume: 4 Issue: 2, 38 - 44, 01.12.2015

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Abstract

Considering the period in which he lived,
known as the ‘Violent 70s’, it is not surprising that Ted Hughes deals with the
theme of violence in his poems. Unlike Hughes’ contemporaries, man and animal
dichotomy in his ecologically conscious poems does not serve to set man apart
from the rest of the creation, or to show his distinguishing features, but to
criticizes the modern man that lost his bonds with nature and his own self.
What he conveys through animal imagery is that once man had strong bonds with
nature, just like animals, yet technology and urbanisation pull him away from
his own nature. His distinctive ecopoems associates nature with violence in an
unconventional manner. Unlike the conventional depictions of violence as merely
a destructive deadly physical force, Hughes depicts it as the primal and
indispensible energy of nature. ‘Hughesian’ violence essentially is an
expression of energy that splits up with moral implications of mankind.

While the Nature’s violence is
represented as a life-giver, vital and powerful energy in a positive way,
modern man in his early poems is the representative of negative violence. 

This
paper argues that Hughes’ animal poems can be classified under the recently
emerged

subgenre, ecopoetry. Ecopoetry
addresses contemporary problems and issues in ways that are ecocentric and
respects the integrity of the other-than-human world, challenging the belief
that humans are meant to have dominion over nature (Gray and Wirth, 2013). In
this regard, Hughes’ poems remind man of his capacity and real place in nature
through the animals and criticize the so-called civilised man challenging his
superiority through depicting him weak and pacified in nature, due to his
disengagement with his own nature. His poetry gives the message that once man
stops ignoring his bonds with Nature and uses Culture to strengthen this bond,
he will reunite his divided self and live harmoniously within the ecological
system. 

Keywords

Ted Hughes, ecopoetry, ecocriticism, violence, culture, nature, man, duality

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