ENG - 401

Submitted by : KOMAL

Submitted to : Ma'am Faryal

Assignment. : 01

Date. : 09 Jan 2023

Critical analysis of the poem thrushes:

Ted Hughes is consistently described as one of the twentieth century's greatest English
poets. Born August 17th, 1930 in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire,his family moved to
Mexborough when he was seven to run a newspaper and tobacco shop. He attended
Mexborough grammar school, and wrote his first poems from the age of fifteen, some of
which made their way into the school magazine. Before beginning English studies at
Cambridge University (having won a scholarship in 1948), he spent much of his
National service time reading and rereading all of Shakespeare. According to a report,
he could recite it all by heart. At Cambridge, he spent most..time reading folklore and
Yeats poems,' and switched from English to Archaeology and Anthropology in his third
year.
Hughe's first book of poems, Hawk in the Rain, was published in 1957 to immediate
acclaim,winning the Harper publication contest. Over the next 41 years, he would write
upwards of 90 books, and win numerous prizes and fellowships.
In 1984, he was appointed England’s poet laureate.Hughes is what some have called a
nature poet. A keen countryman and hunter from a young age, he viewed writing poems
as a continuation of his earlier passion.
The subjects he prefers to write on are, however, several: man in relation to the animal
world, man and nature, war and death. Let us now explore Hughes’s treatment of these
subjects in some detail. Right from his childhood, Ted Hughes has been interested in
animals. When his parents lived in theCalder valley, Ted Hughes had a chance to see
the world of the animals from close quarters. Hughes learnt the first lesson that animals
were by and large victims.The wild world of the animals was at the mercy of the ordered
human world. Yet, as Hughes realized and emphasized in his poetry, the human world
was fascinated by the world of the animals because it had pushed into the unconscious
what the animal world still possessed,vast,untapped energies.

"Thrushes' paints a picture of birds as efficient, instinctive killing machines. Thrushes

are birds usually associated with domesticity and song.The poem is basically about the
actions of a bird, a thrush, and how they are contrasted to a human being. The poet
uses effective language to paint a picture of the thrushes as superiors and places
humans at a disadvantage to the thrushes.
The poet is observing some thrushes on his lawn; the observations lead him to contrast
them to human beings, such as himself, whose best acts seem produced by the
suppression of such energies as the birds display, and at enormous cost. Thrushes are
birds usually associated with domesticity and song.The poem is basically about the
actions of a bird, a thrush, and how they are contrasted to a human being. The poet
uses effective language to paint a picture of the thrushes as superiors and places
humans at a disadvantage to the thrushes.
Within the first stanza Hughes creates the theme of the poem and goes into even more
detail when he writes “No indolent procrastinations and no yawning states, No sighs or
head-scratching. Nothing but bounce and stab and a ravening second.” which gives the
image of the primitive nature that the thrushes have and compares them to the nature of
humans by using words like “procrastination” or “yawning”which would obviously not
happen with animals. The quote, “ravening second sums up the instant of devouring
and links the thrushes with another bird” which is often associated with death or bad
omens.All of the forms of imagery that Ted Hughes uses creates the general theme
about the gap found by observing human and animal behavior, and basically how we
can learn from the other species.Also, the poet tied in tons of metaphorical statements
that help the point get across about the animals to another level. In this stanza the poet
uses vivid imagery as well as forceful vocabulary to sort of present as an
image of a weapon.He uses words such as tarrying, coiled steel, triggered to produce
the image of a powerful weapon. Alliteration “dark deadly”The word “terrifying” shows
how the poet sees the birds as nothing but fearful creatures to be feared.The last line
represents how the thrushes are instinctively driven and do not overthink their
actions.The hyphen represents a change in rhythm the poem to a much faster one
preparing the reader for the climax.
The author’s observation leads the poet into speculation and into asking questions
about the thrushes in stanza two “bullet and automatic purpose”.
Thrush becomes a metaphoric way for the audience to view humanity in a different
perspective. Unlike the thrush, humans can never be defined purely by what he does,
whether acting as the adventurous hero,as the achieving businessman, or as the patient
and expert craftsman. The spiritual and psychological drives which make him human
and distinguish him from the thrush, the shark, or the super-human, pre-programmed,
all of whose essences are defined purely by what they do. In the first stanza when the
author was describing the behavior of the thrushes he uses the metaphor “with a start, a
bounce, a stab” which describes their drive on instinct opposed to humans. They don’t
wait until the last minute like what humans do but instead they are characterized by
immense presence of mind. TedHughes used these forms of figurative language to
create a better understanding for the contrast between human behavior and
animals.The part with “stab”shows the animal’s ability and willingness to kill at any
moment to survive without hesitation. The “start”and “bounce” are seen as qualities that
humans should definitely pick up from the behavior of animals.Another form of this
could be the constant references to guns and knives through the animal’s eyes such as
“gives their days this bullet and automatic” or “more coiled steel than living” which is
again comparing the ways of killing between humans and animals.The poet Ted Hughes
uses personification, colorful imagery, and metaphors in “Thrushes” as a philosophical
attempt to differentiate between human and animal behavior. The poet felt this topic is
important and that his task in writing this was to help heal the wounding breach that he
felt modern humans didn’t fully understand. This poem relates directly to the outside
world because we live in a society of waiting until the last moment and not fully living
our lives to the fullest!
He wonders what motivates this single-minded ruthless purpose. Is it, he asks, the way
they are programmed to some point of evolutionary perfection? Have they been taught
by equally skillful elders, or is there some survival of the species instinct, driven by “a
nestful of brats”? Perhaps it is genius: an almost indefinable term, but one which
reminds him of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who seemed to have
superhuman ability to produce perfect music apparently without trying. His questioning
thoughts turn on the phrase “automatic/ Purpose” toward the shark. The shark’s
automatic purpose is to attack the smell of blood, even if it is its own blood pouring from
its side. The shark then devours itself. It is “too streamlined for any doubt.” In other
words, such efficiency is questionable. The same movement is seen in “Hawk
Roosting,” where the hawk’s megalomania is reminiscent of human megalomaniacs
such as Adolf Hitler and makes readers withdraw any admiration from the bird.
Hughes pushes the poem in a different direction, by explicitly contrasting animals with
humans (presumably, Mozart’s genius is somehow seen as inhuman). Mozart was
having the same automatic response – reaction when he was writing music to a
shark; he was out of the human sphere. In the same way the thrushes do not stop until
they reach a level of perfection, kill their prey instantly. It is about the purity and absolute
concentration of the action. - The final stanza turns to human preoccupations such
as war. In line 18, Hughes Suggests that we need animals to help us become
heroes. He further suggests that we all need something to focus on. The
unknown, fearful and uncontrollable is waiting outside of our orderly lives. We are
constantly being distracted from the things happening in our minds. The thrushes can
concentrate, they become one with the action.
“With a man it is otherwise,” he starkly begins the third and final stanza. Humans are
capable of “Heroisms on horseback,” in the traditional notion of bravery, where any
notion of violence is suppressed. Yet such heroic acts are beyond humanity’s usual
mode of being, which is bound by daily routine. Such heroisms are, like the carver’s
patiently working “at a tiny ivory ornament/ For years,” in a sense outside of people.
Such acts achieve worth or value almost impersonally. They are rare, unlike the
animals’ daily acts of perfect killing. The final line's question aims and prompts us to
reflect on human motivation.
Lastly, Ted Hughes uses reputation to emphasize its significance in the entire text. This
could be seen in the first stanza when he repeats the phrase “with a start, a bounce, a
stab” twice in that very stanza. The purpose of this metaphorical phrase is that it was
directly correlated with the author’s comparison of human behavior with the sudden
response of Thrushes.
In conclusion,Hughes has a holistic view of the universe and of life. He is inspired to
contemplate humanity. He reflects on humanity through the thrushes. Inorder for man to
be a vital human being, he needs to have the experience to struggle with the
knowledge of despair that comes with the awareness of death and
mortality. The physical description of the exterior of the thrushes leads to
consideration of the essence of the bird which is reduced to “nothing but a stab”.The
thrush has been reduced to an act of time that defines the creature. Unlike the thrushes,
humans cannot be defined purely by what they do. It is the spiritual and psychological
drives that make them human and distinguish them from the thrushes whose
essence is purely defined by what they do. The spiritual and psychological
dimension of human beings renders them prone to destruction.