{"id":612,"date":"2024-09-12T11:48:33","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T08:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/?p=612"},"modified":"2024-09-12T11:53:11","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T08:53:11","slug":"ted-hughess-selected-war-poems-from-wodwoo-and-the-hawk-in-the-rain-as-a-reflection-of-the-atrocities-and-sufferings-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/?p=612","title":{"rendered":"Ted Hughes\u2019s Selected War Poems from Wodwoo and The Hawk in the Rain as a Reflection of the Atrocities and Sufferings of War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Hughes\u2019s Selected War Poems from <\/strong>Wodwoo and The Hawk in the Rain as <\/strong>a Reflection of the Atrocities and Sufferings of War <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Sarah Hodeib (Phd)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u062f. \u0633\u0627\u0631\u0629 \u062d\u062f\u064a\u0628<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u062a\u0627\u0631\u064a\u062e \u0627\u0644\u0627\u0633\u062a\u0644\u0627\u0645 26\/3\/2024\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u062a\u0627\u0631\u064a\u062e \u0627\u0644\u0642\u0628\u0648\u0644 26\/4\/2024<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n

War poetry emerged as a prominent literary genre at the onset of the 20th century, reflecting the profound impact of global conflicts on society and individual psyches. Ted Hughes, one of the most notable war poets, captures the essence of war’s brutality in his acclaimed collections, Wodwo<\/em> and The Hawk in the Rain<\/em>. This paper examines how Hughes\u2019 war poems stand out as some of the most compelling examples of modern poetry, offering a raw and unflinching portrayal of the devastation, destruction, and atrocities associated with war. Hughes\u2019 work serves a dual purpose: providing catharsis and redress as this paper tries to argue. Through vivid and often stark imagery, his poems address the haunting effects of war on both the guilty survivors and their traumatized descendants. These narratives resonate with the brutality of contemporary conflicts, making Hughes’ work a blunt exposition of war’s horrific consequences. This paper explores how Hughes\u2019 poetry articulates the complex emotions tied to war and its aftermath, cementing his place as a pivotal figure in modern war poetry.<\/p>\n

Keywords: War poetry, Ted Hughes, catharsis, trauma, contemporary conflicts, brutality, 20th century literature, modern poetry<\/em><\/p>\n

\u0627\u0644\u0645\u0644\u062e\u0635<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u0627\u0644\u0643\u0644\u0645\u0627\u062a \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0641\u062a\u0627\u062d: <\/strong>\u0642\u0635\u0627\u0626\u062f \u0627\u0644\u062d\u0631\u0628\u060c \u062a\u064a\u062f \u0647\u064a\u0648\u0632\u060c \u0627\u0644\u062a\u0651\u0637\u0647\u064a\u0631\u060c \u0627\u0644\u0635\u0651\u062f\u0645\u0629\u060c \u0627\u0644\u0635\u0651\u0631\u0627\u0639\u0627\u062a \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0639\u0627\u0635\u0631\u0629\u060c \u0627\u0644\u0648\u062d\u0634\u064a\u0629\u060c \u0623\u062f\u0628 \u0627\u0644\u0642\u0631\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u0639\u0634\u0631\u064a\u0646\u060c \u0627\u0644\u0634\u0651\u0639\u0631 \u0627\u0644\u062d\u062f\u064a\u062b<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.0 Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>With the start of the 20th<\/sup> century, wars became the potential destroyers of human kind, and with it came a horrific change in modern warfare. The advancement of weapons and the urgent call for the mighty nations to test their powers in a battlefield drove them to involve in wars like World War I and World War II that proved to be the immediate and most devastating elements of abolition to all: man, beast and mother earth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sadly, people don\u2019t learn from their mistakes; the errors, human losses and mass destruction haven\u2019t stopped them from the lustful pursuit of wars which is still depicted in the unfolding of a century and the beginning of another. The same thirst for blood still moves powerful nations to continue orchestrating systematic wars for their own profits; thus, the 21st<\/sup> century is just the same as its previous counterpart. In the Middle East, for example, which is a part of the globe that is cursed with instability, the Afghani, Iraqi, and Syrian wars were launched by the United States and the constant Israeli war launched against the helpless Palestinians whose land was usurped by the former. In Europe, which is believed to be a \u201cbetter\u201d geographical location, where people there are \u201cluckier\u201d or more \u201ccivilized\u201d, a war has erupted between Ukraine and Russia that came as a slap on the faces of all the Western calls for peace and civility particularly after the end of WWII; this recent European war has unveiled the same narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy and fanaticism that Europe has accused the Middle East of, and the same destruction and ugliness is witnessed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0All the aforementioned contemporary wars are but living examples of the horrific realities and atrocities of war in all its aspects. They are reminders of the brutality and inhumanity of people involved in those wars from the onset of the 20th<\/sup> century up to our contemporary times. However, as literature is often times a vehicle in which some of the realities of life are represented, those terrifying realities of wars found a way to be vented out and voiced in literature whether in the forms of novels, poetry or drama to reveal both the intensity and futility of wars waged worldwide. Soldiers participating directly and indirectly in wars wrote extensively about their experiences trying to bring it to light to those who do not know the realities of the battlefield. The trend started during WWI and WWII when participating soldiers in both wars started writing poems that talked about their experience in the war. \u00a0Among the most famous war writers and poets of the 20th<\/sup> century were Seigfried Sassoon, Ernest Hemmingway and later Ted Hughes who revealed many terrifying truths of trench warfare during WWI.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Contemporary war poetry, states Sara Martin Alegre (2003), is as varied as post-war novels and post-war dramas and the history of post-war poetry is initially the history of the poet\u2019s constant fluctuations towards and away from T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden (p. 28). Poets like Wendy Cope, Roy Fuller, Thom Gunn, Dylan Thomas and Ted Hughes are prominent figures of contemporary war poetry and its various movements and schools. Alegre (2003) interestingly recounts a brief history of those movements starting with Romantic and other singular poets headed by Dylan Thomas who became the main poet living in Britain after Auden\u2019s exile (p. 29). Dylan Thomas\u2019s new romanticism exerted an immediate influence on the poets of the 1940s and the movement was called New Romanticism. Many poets preferred to follow the example of Thomas\u2019 style mainly because it was characterized by a highly sensitive, personal and subjective poetry (unlike Auden\u2019s more rational approach) in their search of a poetical language capable of expressing the anxieties endured by the individual trapped by the horrors of contemporary history (p. 29). \u00a0The Movement was another group of poets emerging in the 1950s who were products of the expansion of education brought by the labor government: often of lower middle-class origin who had been helped by scholarships to enter Oxford or Cambridge, and were later employed as lecturers of English in the new universities (p. 29). The poetry of The Movement mocked the excesses of New Romanticism and was characterized by its urbanity, civility and decorum, and by a restrained use of emotion. It was a poetry aimed at maintaining with the reader a level-toned and civilized conversation, often of a fairly literary kind (p.30). Apart from The Movement, explicates Alegre (2003), the 1950s saw a birth of The Group which had no common pattern, no manifesto, but acted as an open forum where poets could read each other\u2019s work, and thus foreshadowed the now popular writing workshops (p.30). Later, other groups of poets called the Underground Poets started their careers in the 1950s and showed a much greater enthusiasm towards American poetry. For them, American poetry seemed more in touch with the rough rhythms of contemporary life than the urbane poetry of The Movement (p.31). This interest in incorporating foreign poetical influences into English poetry was also shared by Ted Hughes and Goeffrey Hill. Despite their very different styles, both sensed the historical realities of post-war Europe demanded a more vigorous poetry than anything The Movement could offer (p.31). Therefore, Hughes has become one of the main poetical voices in English literature thanks to his celebration of the dark rhythms of nature and his valuation of the animal world above the rational, destructive impulses of human civilization (p.31).<\/p>\n

1.2 Research Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As offered above with the brief account of poetry emerging on the 20th<\/sup> century scene after both World Wars, this paper will try to investigate some of Hughes\u2019s famous war poems taken from his much-acclaimed books, Wodwoo <\/em>and The Hawk in the Rain<\/em> as examples of the most compelling poetries of the modern age and will try to answer two questions. The first is that Hughes\u2019s selected war poems serve as a catharsis or redress when portraying the effects of war on both the guilty survivor and their traumatized descendants. Another question worth investigating is the blunt exposition of the devastation, destruction and atrocities of war depicted in Hughes\u2019 poems as loathsome and vile as they are.<\/p>\n

2.0 Literature Review<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ted Hughes, an English poet who was born in 1930 and died in 1998, was also Poet Laureate for about a decade, a short story writer and a dramatist. He is already regarded as a major poet of the twentieth century and is being read as a writer with huge significance for the future of the human species in the twenty-first century (Gifford, 2009, p. 223). From the beginning, Hughes possessed an amazingly coherent sense of the field he wanted to explore and articulate, first through poetry, and then through stories and plays (p.231). He also knew that he wanted to break with the conventional wisdom, preoccupations and the modes of poetry that dominated England, so he felt that the Movement poets were avoiding the most urgent questions facing human beings in a post-industrial society (p.231). As a result, his work was a radical attempt to challenge the taken-for-granted issues by addressing those urgent questions like: what connected human nature, the inner lives of people, with the great forces of nature around them? How could people negotiate a relationship with the apparently battling life and death processes of the earth in which they had their home? (p.241). Of course, Hughes himself believed that the poet had a public duty to explore the most troubling questions of his time and produce work that would have a healing function if the poet has faced up to the most dangerous risks, and kept his moral and linguistic focus (p. 249). This research goes along the same lines as the above-mentioned point and also tries to focus on the ability of the poet to create poems that would serve as a healing function to the poet himself. The poem, thus, becomes the remedy to cure extreme emotional distress.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Britain, Hughes was recognized as a major post-war poet, who despite his unusual and often challenging books, was adopted by the establishment at all levels. Hughes was also awarded the Queen\u2019s Gold Medal in 1974 and the OBE in 1977 (p.667).<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In his Birthday Letters <\/em>Hughes defined poetry as:<\/p>\n

nothing more than a facility for expressing that complicated process in which we locate, and attempt to heal, affliction \u2013 whether our own or that of others whose feelings we can share. The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded pain \u2013 and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world. (as cited. in Gifford, 2009, p. 3841)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Again, Hughes gives a clear idea of the way he regards poetry as a healing power to a pain the poet himself feels or with a pain shared by others around him. In this light, Hughes\u2019s war poetry should be seen in exactly the same way; a means to heal the pain that the poet feels from the direct exposure of the realities of war, and\/or from the imagined and shared experience of war from others.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Tim Kendall (2005) states in his excellent article \u201cFighting Back Over the Same Ground\u201d that \u00a0\u00a0primitivism, shamanism, trickster myth, pastoral, post-pastoral, ecology, para-psychology \u2013it sometimes seems there is no context so esoteric that it has not been used to explain Hughes\u2019s work (p.88). However, Hughes\u2019s reputation as a war poet ranges widely from critics who do not acknowledge his war poetry and consider it in passing, to others who find Hughes\u2019s war poetry as a direct reflection of the realities and horrors of war.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As a result, Hughes\u2019s position as a war poet, according to Kendall (2005), \u201crequires some defending because, not withstanding his own prompts and observation, the bulk of critical writing on Hughes remains silent about war\u201d (p. 88). Terry Gifford and Neil Roberts, for instance, indicate that Hughes\u2019s war poems are not really war poems at all, and even Wilfred Owen, to whom Hughes professes a fundamental indebtedness, rates barely a mention in most critical studies. Therefore, whatever insights the various approaches to Hughes have afforded, states Kendall, their blindness to his belief that experience cannot be disentangled from the influence of war guarantees that they miss the forming impulse of his poetry (p.88). Kendall (2005) explains that Hughes recognized that impulse to be originated in a war fought on the home front as well as internationally (p.88). In this light, Hughes\u2019s war poems should be considered as revealing as any other war poetry of his time and should be given more examination as this paper aims to accomplish.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Susan Bassnett (2009) states that Hughes was born in 1930, eleven years after the end of world war and nine years before the start of the next. He came to the world in an England troubled by poverty and political divisiveness, into a community in rural Yorkshire where the memories of the suffering endured by men in the trenches were very much alive, and his early poetry is full of references to stories that he must have heard recounted in his childhood. Bassnett also explains that Hughes\u2019s generation was touched by war through relationships with the survivors and the bereaved (p.1-2). This is quite true since Hughes\u2019s war poetry bring to life the horrific images of war trenches and the intensity of sufferings that a soldier might have felt. Hughes\u2019s \u201cfather\u2019s combat experience,\u201d states Meyers (2009), \u201cand the work of war poets like Wilfred Owen and Seigfried Sasoon inspired an imaginative as well as realistic approach, and he packed his poems with literary as well as historical allusions (p.31). In fact, Hughes is considered in contemporary norms one of the greatest writers who had succeeded in visualizing not only the destruction and horrors of war, but also the psychological impact as well as the trauma felt by soldiers who had engaged in war<\/p>\n

Thus, this paper explores how Hughes\u2019 war poetry articulates the complex emotions tied to war and its aftermath, cementing his place as a pivotal figure in modern war poetry.<\/p>\n

3.0 Discussion<\/strong><\/p>\n

3.1 Hughes War poetry as a catharsis or redress for both the guilty survivor and their traumatized descendants<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The term \u2018war poetry\u2019 has become so familiar that its internal tensions go unnoticed, explains Kendall in The Oxford Handbook<\/em> of British and War Poetry <\/em>(as cited in Stringer,1993, p. 1). He further states that it\u2019s hard to imagine two human activities more unlike each other than experiencing a war and writing a poem, because, the first suggests destruction, the other creation; one chaos, the other order; one pain and the other pleasure. War poetry, argues Kendall (2005), accommodates binary oppositions, most notably life and death. A war poem must be at war with itself since it illuminates a dark subject matter (p.1) and actually \u201cbeautifies the terrible\u201d (p.4). Indeed, Kendall\u2019s argument seems to pinpoint the fact that war poetry signifies the horrors and brutalities of war while neglecting the internal struggles that the poet feels when composing the aesthetic out of the gruesome. This juxtaposition makes the poet experience a sense of guilt combined with a need of a redress of some kind in order to voice those struggles. Ted Hughes\u2019s war poems do exactly that; serving as a catharsis for the guilty feelings of the surviving soldiers of war (his father and uncle) and himself for daring to \u201cbeautify the terrible\u201d experiences they have witnessed in the form of poetry.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWhen I started writing, I wrote again and again about the First World War\u201d Ted Hughes acknowledged one day (as qtd. in Kendall, 2005, p.87). Hughes further explains that his father\u2019s stories made that very near to him, and living in West Yorkshire, where everybody seemed to have lost everybody that went to war, was a very impressive experience to grow up in (Hadley, 2009, p. 40). Although Hughes had never gone to war as a soldier, yet he is still considered one of the best war poets that succeeded in reflecting all the sorrow and tragedy that accompanied the life of a soldier after returning from battle and the psychological effects on the soldier\u2019s life and that of his immediate family.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Jeffrey Meyers (2013) asserts the aforementioned fact in his excellent article \u201cTed Hughes: War Poet\u201d in which he explains that Ted Hughes was born in 1930, and grew up in a household overshadowed by the experiences of his father and uncle in World War I. His father, William, escaped the slaughter in Gallipoli in May 1915, and thus was one of only seventeen survivors of an entire battalion of a thousand men massacred by Turkish artillery (p. 30). As a result, Hughes\u2019s father told war stories that \u201cwere so vivid, his psychological wound so palpable that Hughes felt that he himself had witnessed the apocalyptic carnage\u201d (p. 30). Indeed, most of Hughes\u2019s war poems reflect the trauma that his father had felt and this \u201csurvivor\u2019s guilt passed on to Hughes as a child [and] continued to torment his life and influence his art\u201d (p. 30). The majority of Hughes\u2019s war poetry resound this guilty feeling and internal struggle of the surviving soldier who had witnessed the brutal realities of war. However, whatever destructive feelings resulted from the aftermath of the war his father or even his Uncle Walt (who was also a soldier who fought in WWI) had engaged in, they were successfully twisted by Hughes into poems that would mirror the horrific and the cruelties of war, and would serve as a form of catharsis or redress to the guilt-stricken survivor.\u00a0 Hughes\u2019 war poems entitled \u201cOut\u201d and \u201cThe Last of the 1st<\/sup>\/5th<\/sup> Lancashire Fusiliers\u201d are both about his father\u2019s wound and portray soldiers surviving their physical wound but not their psychological trauma (p. 36). This reality is as crippling as any other physical wound, and could prove to be even more destructive if it were not properly vented out from the tormented memory of the soldier. As a matter of fact, Hughes tried his best to make both his father and his uncle Walt tell everything they had experienced during the war as a way to relieve them from their tormented souls yet failed most of the time. In \u201cMy Uncle\u2019s Wound\u201d, for instance, the poet tries to make contact with his old Uncle Walt through his stories (Bassnett, 2009, p. 1) and both he and his uncle go back forty years later to the place in Normandy where his uncle was wounded in the Great War (Meyers, 2013, p. 36). The dazed and weary uncle is tormented once again by horrific memories: \u201cthe black stench of dead men,\u201d \u201cthe crazed eyes of men \/ Once blown to pieces then reassembled\u201d (p.36). The uncle also recalls how a sniper\u2019s \u201cbullet picked him up by the hip bone \/ And laid him in a shell-hole,\u201d where he remained, showered by bullets for the rest of the day (p. 36). Clearly, the memories come haunting the uncle with a vengeance and reopen the wounds in the same vicious intensity of the past. Hughes sympathizes with him and tries to make him articulate those memories, but unfortunately, his attempts in freeing his uncle from his fatal memories prove unsuccessful. \u201cI scavenged for a memory,\u201d writes Hughes, \u201c[for] crumbs of rust or of bone\u201d, but his uncle has lost touch and \u201cHe became quiet\/ With his memories\u201d (as qtd. in Bassnett, 2009, p. 2) and plunged again into the terrifying past leaving the poet feeling sorry for him. In this sense, Hughes\u2019s poem \u201cMy Uncle\u2019s Wound\u201d is meant to be a redress and catharsis of his uncle\u2019s culpable survival after the dreadful experiences he had faced in war. In the poem, Hughes has done what his uncle couldn\u2019t: uttering the suppressed memories that depict the vicious realities of war, thus, cleansing the poet\u2019s own feelings of guilt as well as his uncle\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 Similarly, in \u201cOut\u201d and \u201cThe Last of the 1st<\/sup>\/5th<\/sup> Lancashire Fusiliers\u201d Hughes also highlights the intensity of the guilt his father feels after the war and how his behavior affects his family specifically Hughes. Meyer (2013) explains that the title \u201cOut\u201d may refer to a soldier coming out of his grave. It opens in 1934, sixteen years after the end of the war, when the four-year old Hughes observes the effects of a shell shock (p.37) on his father:<\/p>\n

My father sat in his chair recovering<\/p>\n

From the four-year mastication by gunfire and mud,<\/p>\n

Body buffeted wordless, estranged by long soaking<\/p>\n

In the colors of mutilation. (p. 37)<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here Hughes draws a very moving picture of his father\u2019s detachment from the real world and his engrossment in the horrors of the past. He sits on a chair remembering his four- year involvement in a cruel war while flashbacks of the dead mutilated bodies haunt him beyond imagination. He seems so guilty that he has outlived the horror, and this drags him back into the trenches among his dead comrades. In this sense, Meyer (2013) explicates that:<\/p>\n

[Hughes\u2019s] father, suffering survivor\u2019s guilt, remembers (can never forget) the cruel detritus of war \u201cjawbones and blown-off boots, tree-stumps, shellcases and craters,\u201d the \u201ctree stumps\u201d suggesting the leg-stumps left in the \u201cblown-off boots\u201d. He feels he belongs not with the living, but with his long-lost comrades, the \u201cfour-year strata of dead Englishmen.\u201d (p.37)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Again, the recurrent \u201cguilty\u201d feeling of the survivor stiffens the air as Hughes, \u201csmall and four\/ Lay on the carpet as his luckless double\u201d states Kendall (as qtd in Stringer, 1996, p. 527). The four-year- old (Hughs) lies down under his father\u2019s feet \u201cwith the spent and useless debris of war, sprawled out \u2018Among jawbones and blown-off boots\u201d states Pearsall (2009), and the father\u2019s immobility \u201cis contagious and inescapable\u201d (p. 528). This highlights the fact that the horrid experiences that his father had witnessed are not exclusive to him but reach all those in direct contact with him because his face mirrors those horrible atrocities. Hughes waits for him to speak out, but his father keeps buried in those bitter memories of his. Unlike his father, Hughes \u201csought relief and consolation, as his father could not, in his furious art, propelled by emotion recollected in emotion\u201d explains Meyers (2013, p. 39). \u00a0As such, writing this poem was a means to vent out both his father\u2019s and his own guilt towards surviving a brutal and incomprehensible war, and his poem acts as a catharsis to free both the poet and his father; the poet succeeds in voicing out the \u201cterrible\u201d and by that articulation, he is able to get rid of his guilt via his art.<\/p>\n

3.2 Hughes\u2019s war poems as a blunt exposure to the devastation, destruction and atrocities of war.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The majority of war poetry depicts the destruction and devastation war causes, but the intriguing aspect about Hughes\u2019s war poems lies in the way he glorifies the violence of the \u201cpredator\u201d and not the sufferings of the \u201cprey\u201d. Death was a dominant theme in Hughes\u2019s most bloody and horrific poetry, states Meyers (2013), and his first connection with animals came from killing them.\u00a0 His doomed soldiers, thus, have the feral primitivism of the hunting and hunted beasts (p. 30). In this sense, the soldiers in the battlefield become animals in the jungle, who are both the predators and the prey in the way they tear each other apart mercilessly. \u201cAt war with themselves and with men\u201d, explains Meyers (2013), \u201cthese animals have, like predators tearing out the entrails of their prey, a primeval instinct to kill\u201d (p. 30). Hughes characteristic hawk in the famous The Hawk in the Rain<\/em> surveys the world between \u201chooked head and hooked feet\u201d:<\/p>\n

I kill where I please because it is all mine \u2026.<\/p>\n

My manners are tearing off heads \u2013<\/p>\n

The allotment of death.<\/p>\n

For the one path of my flight is direct<\/p>\n

Through the bones of the living. (cited in Meyers, 2013, pp. 30-31)<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The hawk in the poem represents the stronger soldier who feels he has the absolute power to kill without mercy; tearing out heads viciously, and sharing them as a war loot with death. The hawk seems to be sneering at the weak prey, and showing off his strength in contrast to the victim\u2019s helplessness. Meyers (2009) further clarifies that Hughes\u2019s poetry combined the instinct to kill of fierce birds and animals with the killing of men in war and then contrasted the natural world of gentler animals with the murder of men in battle (p. 31). Again, most Hughes\u2019s war poems emphasize how \u201chis fascination with predators is flavored by the cordite oozings of war\u201d (Kendall, 2005, p. 92), a fact that again signifies the ugly and animalistic nature of war. In \u201cBomber Pilot\u201d, for instance, Hughes celebrates the pilot\u2019s absolute power that he possesses due to his unreachable status high above:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I can boast<\/p>\n

The enemy capital will jump to a fume<\/p>\n

At a turn of my wrist<\/p>\n

And the huge earth be shaken in its frame. (as cited in Meyers, 2009, p. 34)<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here again, Hughes portrays a boastful pilot who knows the extant of destruction his bombs will create on the towns of the enemy. In wars, just like in the forest, only the fittest survive. While most war poems highlight the sufferings of the defeated, Hughes \u201caims to depict a violence that shocks society with this truth about itself and its actions\u201d (Kendall, 2009, p. 95). As a result, most Hughes\u2019s poems describe in minute details the aftermath of a battlefield scene with the bodies of the deceased scattered into pieces. For instance, in \u201cOut\u201d, Hughes describes the \u201cjawbones and blown-off boots\u201d of the dead soldiers as they lie in the field. In \u201cBayonet Charge\u201d, explicates Meyers (2009), Hughes portrays an infantry attack, and captures the excitement, confusion and terror of battle as a soldier, literally, running for his life and to almost certain death, plunges towards the pathetic protection of a green hedge:<\/p>\n

\n

King, honour, human dignity, etcetera<\/p>\n

Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm<\/p>\n

To get out that blue crackling air<\/p>\n

His terror\u2019s touchy dynamite. (p. 32)<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the above quote, Hughes mocks the conceptual ideals of \u201cKing\u201d, \u201chonor\u201d and \u201chuman dignity,\u201d that a soldier is brainwashed with before enlisting in a war, contrasting them to the true ugly face of war. All those terms a soldier is bombarded with before war prove futile and worthless when the soldier makes a run for his life or when he witnesses the body of his comrade shattering into pieces. The explosions happening are both from within and without; he is surrounded with explosions and he risks the danger of the terror swarming inside him from exploding like \u201cdynamite\u201d. In this scene, states Meyers (2013), Hughes seems to be echoing Hemmingway\u2019s A Farewell to Arms <\/em>(1929) in which he also rejects the patriotic lies during a war and insists that only the actual places that men had fought and died had any dignity and meaning: \u201cI had seen nothing sacred [in war],\u201d states Hemmingway, \u201cand the things that were glorious had no glory . . . Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene\u201d (as qtd. in Meyers, 2013, p. 32) beside the concrete realities of war. Hughes, thus, was dedicated to the exposure of truth in his war poems and wanted to convey that \u201cmouthing jingoistic lies\u201d (Meyers, 2013, p. 32) do not justify all the pathos and terror of the horrific fighting. So, \u201cIn Griefs for Dead Soldiers\u201d, Hughes sets the pathos and terror of the fighting against the blind patriotism that is meant to justify it all (p. 32).<\/p>\n

To sum up, Ted Hughes is considered one of great pioneers of war poets whose poetry now \u201cresonate more forcefully than ever as we try to help the current wave of shell-shocked victims of the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan\u201d (Meyers, 2013, p. 39). His war poetry also show war as brutal as it is without concealing its ugly reality as a means to expose its brutality and the fakeness from all its \u201csupposed\u201d glory.<\/p>\n

\n

4.0 Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The emergence of war poetry at the turn of the 20th century reflects a significant shift in literary expression, driven by the need to articulate the profound and often horrific experiences of global conflicts. Ted Hughes’ contributions to this genre, particularly through his collections Wodwo<\/em> and The Hawk in the Rain<\/em>, exemplify the power of poetry to confront and convey the raw realities of war. His poems serve as a form of catharsis for both the guilty survivors and their traumatized descendants, providing a necessary outlet for the intense emotions associated with wartime experiences.<\/p>\n

Hughes’ unflinching portrayal of the devastation and atrocities of war offers readers a blunt and honest exposition of its impact, resonating deeply with the brutality of contemporary conflicts. By delving into the psychological and emotional aftermath of war, Hughes’ poetry not only documents historical events but also explores the enduring human cost of violence and conflict. His work stands as a testament to the enduring relevance of war poetry, highlighting its role in helping society to understand, process, and ultimately find some measure of redress for the traumas of war.<\/p>\n

Through vivid imagery and poignant narratives, Hughes has cemented his place as a pivotal figure in modern war poetry, demonstrating the genre’s ability to capture the complexities of human experience in the face of unimaginable adversity. As we continue to grapple with the consequences of contemporary conflicts, Hughes’ war poems remain a powerful reminder of the enduring impact of war on the human soul.<\/p>\n

4.1 Further Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>His war poetry could be further studied in terms of psychoanalysis as comparing his war poetry with the life he had led. This could be significant especially since Ted Hughes\u2019s personal life was a marked by a series of grim dilemmas with the suicide of his first wife Sylvia Plath, the famous American poet, the suicide of his second wife Assia Gumann, and the war trauma that Hughes had witnessed of both his father and his uncle. All the aforementioned troubles had definitely left an intense impact that should be traced in his war poems and further examined.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alegre, S. M. (2003). Post-war English literature 1945-1990<\/em>. University Oberta de Catalunya. Retrieved from http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/sites\/gent.uab.cat.saramartinalegre\/files\/Post-War%201945-1990.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Bassnett, S. (2009). Writers and their work: Ted Hughes<\/em>. Tavistock, GBR: Writers and their Work. ProQuest ebrary. Retrieved November 10, 2015, from http:\/\/site.ebrary.com\/<\/p>\n

Gifford, T. (2009). Ted Hughes<\/em>. New York, NY: Routledge.<\/p>\n

Hadley, E. (2009). The elegies of Ted Hughes<\/em> (Durham theses). Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http:\/\/etheses.dur.ac.uk\/2903\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Pearsall, C. D. (2009). The war remains of Keith Douglas and Ted Hughes. In The Oxford handbook of British and Irish war poetry<\/em>. Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

Kendall, T. (2005). Fighting back over the same ground. The Yale Review, 93<\/em>(1), 87-102.<\/p>\n

Kendall, T. (2007). The Oxford handbook of British and Irish war poetry<\/em>. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

Meyers, J. (2013). Ted Hughes: War poet. The Antioch Review, 71<\/em>(1), 30-39, 196-197. Retrieved from http:\/\/search.proquest.com\/docview\/1274705825?accountid=8555<\/a><\/p>\n

Roberts, N. (2007). Ted Hughes ‘New Selected Poems’<\/em>. Literature Insights. Humanities-Ebooks.<\/p>\n

Stringer, J. (1996). The Oxford companion to twentieth-century literature in English<\/em>. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). Retrieved November 10, 2015, from http:\/\/search.ebscohost.com\/<\/p>\n

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Ted Hughes\u2019s Selected War Poems from Wodwoo and The Hawk in the Rain as a Reflection of the Atrocities and Sufferings of War \u00a0\u00a0Sarah Hodeib (Phd) \u062f. \u0633\u0627\u0631\u0629 \u062d\u062f\u064a\u0628 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u062a\u0627\u0631\u064a\u062e \u0627\u0644\u0627\u0633\u062a\u0644\u0627\u0645 26\/3\/2024\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u062a\u0627\u0631\u064a\u062e \u0627\u0644\u0642\u0628\u0648\u0644 26\/4\/2024 \u00a0 Abstract War poetry emerged as a prominent literary genre at the onset of the 20th century, reflecting the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,51],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47","category-51","tag-56"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":632,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-manafeth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}