The Exploration of Human Alter Ego in Animals: An Evaluation of Ted Hughes’s Animal Poems

Abstract

Ted Hughes, inarguably one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, occupies an unparalleled position in contemporary English poetry chiefly because of hispoetics of animal imagery that has so far been approached from different perspectives. This paper focuses on Hughes’s representative poems and puts forth the theory that his arts poetica actually develops from two simultaneous feelings, firstly his conviction in pristine animal energy, and secondly, his disillusionment about the humanization of man through the suppression of his primeval energy. These diametrical feelings make Hughes speak in favour of the suppressed elements of the psyche which alone promise resilience in the face of uncaring reality. Hughes thinks the civilizing ideologies actually result in the subversion of the primal imperviousness of the alter ego which is spontaneously manifested in non-human beings. A corollary of this paper is that Hughes’s signature poems encompassing ‘The Hawk in the Rain’, ‘The Jaguar’, ‘Hawk Roosting’, ‘Pike’, ‘Snowdrop, ‘Second Glance at a Jaguar’ etc. and the Crow Poems make more sense when studied with reference to human alter ego represented through the poet’s conscious delineation of non-human instincts.