Formalist Analysis 2v4o6w

ANALYSIS OF A POEM ‘Wind’ FROM

CRITICS AND FORMALISTIC

NEW

POINT OF

VIEW "Wind" is a poem by Ted Hughes about a menacing storm that proceeds to strike a house in a deserted, unpopulated area of land and about its destructive effect on the land. Hughes uses effective personification, similes, metaphors, alliteration and some creative imagery to create an atmosphere of danger; then as the poem progresses, to create an atmosphere of defeat and helplessness. Hughes tells us that no human is strong enough to withstand the sheer power of nature and that nature is an incredible aspect of the universe. This is a deep poem. The sounds of the poem are fragile, as if almost ready to break. All the sounds of the poem are breaking and show destruction. There are many ‘ing’ words (participles) used in the poem. Some are used as modifiers like: “booming hill and blinding wet” while other are used as infinitive verbs like: woods crashing, winds stampeding, window floundering, flexing, fields quivering, fire blazing, seeing, and hearing by the poet. The purpose of Poet to use all these words is to show continuity in the poem. These all words show that something is happening right now. It gives the impression to the reader of viewing these happenings in front of their eyes and creates an imaginative process to sketch an image in the minds of the reader. So, this recurrent use of participles as infinite verbs not only proves to give a melody to the poem but serves a purpose of creating timelessness situation as well. The overall ‘story’ of the poem is about a storm, and about the narrator’s responses to it. One of the ways in which Ted Hughes emphasizes the unfolding story is by using indicators of time. Each of the first three verses pinpoints the time. It is seen that almost in the first two lines of the stanza’s these time indicators are used, for example in the first stanza the phrase “all night” tells the time period of the storm striking the house. Similarly in, second stanza’s first line “Till day rose” shows the continuity of the storm after all night till the breaking of the dawn. The third stanza moves the time period to afternoon from the morning by mentioning “At noon”. Time is clearly an important theme here, and this is emphasized by the repetition of “any second” in the fourth and fifth stanzas and by the use of temporal deictic expression “now”. Fourth and fifth stanza does not advance the period of the storm but gives a clear image of how ruthless the storm still is.

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The punctuation used in the poem is eye catching and gives a form of rhythm to the poem by demarcating the reader where to stop and where to glide over the words bestowing the poem. There is a use of comma, semi colon and hyphen within the stanza in order to make the reader compatible where to give small pauses. But what is striking that the sentence completion by the full stop often ‘runs over’ to the second stanza, connecting of the first stanza with the ones that follow it, and the second with the next one and so on. This technique is consciously used by the writer in order to build a connection within the stanzas and give the poem a unity. The poem contains variety of metaphors. The poem begins with the metaphor in which the house has been compared with a ship that is moving to and fro and loosing its balance in the sea storm. There is no explicit use of words “like” or “as” to show us that house has been compared to the ship but the visualization effect make one unconsciously compare the house with the ship trembling in the storm. ‘House’ is extended metaphor in this poem, starting from first line: “This house has been far out at sea all night” The third stanza again has same metaphor; “the house-side as far as the coal-house door.” ”. Fifth stanza is seen to have a metaphor again “the house rang like some fine green goblet in the note”. The last stanza like the first stanza do not have an explicit indication of the metaphor but with the help of imagery make us think of the same house i.e ship in storm with that of a tree which due to storm is on the verge of being uprooted, “and feel the roots of the house move”. ‘hills’ is also metaphor of sails of ship. The other metaphor is seen in the second stanza where Hughes has compared the changing colours of the sky due to the stormy weather with the movement of the lens of a mad eye. The metaphor is so beautifully highlighted that whole of the second stanza becomes contributing its aspects for comparison with the mad eye and gives a view of a metaphor. “Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.” The fourth stanza also has a metaphor explaining the bending of black gull’s back with the bending of the iron bar, “a black-back gull bent like an iron bar Thus every stanza encomes a metaphor within which helps Hughes to describe the high pressure of the wind storm with the help of examples from our daily life and makes us visualize the destruction. With the use of metaphor there is use of alliteration as well that gives the poem not only melody but also pinpoint to the stressed syllables which the poet want his readers to note. Because of repetition, the reader stops unconsciously to see the usage of words. These alliterations are consciously used by Hughes to show the great variety of adjectives and adverbs he has used in 2

the poem like in “A black-back gull bent like an iron bar slowly”. The repeated sound of “b” and use of maximum monosyllable words produces slowness in utterance. Other then the poetic techniques mentioned above, there is also a variety of use of personification which gives inanimate objects life and makes them animate objects by making them share the characteristics of living beings. Almost in every line Hughes denote a living feature to the non-living things. For examples “woods crashing” … the rustling sound of the leaves due to the strong wind storm is producing the sound of crashing up and to make this to sound as destruction caused by wind Hughes uses crashing to be attributed with the woods. Similar instances are found through out the poem in words like “booming hills”, “stampeding the fields”, “window foundering”, “burnt wind”, “hills drummed”, “fields quivering”, “house rang”, “windows tremble”, “stones cry out”. Thus, the poem prevails with the theme of nature as the source of destruction and the adverse changes brought about by the forceful wind. To establish this theme beautifully, Hughes has used a variety of poetic techniques which are discussed above.

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