Sylvia Plath

"Lady Lazarus"
Summary
"Lady Lazarus" is a poem commonly understood to be about suicide. It is narrated by a
woman, and mostly addressed to an unspecified person.
The narrator begins by saying she has "done it again." Every ten years, she manages to
commit this unnamed act. She considers herself a walking miracle with bright skin, her right
foot a "paperweight," and her face as fine and featureless as a "Jew linen". She address an
unspecified enemy, asking him to peel the napkin from her face, and inquiring whether he is
terrified by the features he sees there. She assures him that her "sour breath" will vanish in a
day.
She is certain that her flesh will soon be restored to her face after having been sacrificed to the
grave, and that she will then be a smiling, 30 year-old woman. She will ultimately be able to
die nine times, like a cat, and has just completed her third death. She will die once each
decade. After each death, a "peanut-crunching crowd" shoves in to see her body unwrapped.
She addresses the crowd directly, showing them she remains skin and bone, unchanged from
who she was before.
The first death occurred when she was ten, accidentally. The second death was intentional she did not mean to return from it. Instead, she was as "shut as a seashell" until she was called
back by people who then picked the worms off her corpse. She does not specifically identify
how either death occurred.
She believes that "Dying / Is an art, like everything else," and that she does it very well. Each
time, "it feels real," and is easy for her. What is difficult is the dramatic comeback, the return
to the same place and body, occurring as it does in broad daylight before a crowd's cry of "A
miracle!" She believes people should pay to view her scars, hear her heart, or receive a word,
touch, blood, hair or clothes from her.
In the final stanzas, she addresses the listener as "Herr Dockter" and "Herr Enemy," sneering
that she is his crowning achievement, a "pure gold baby." She does not underestimate his
concern, but is bothered by how he picks through her ashes. She insists there is nothing there
but soap, a wedding ring, and a gold filling. She warns "Herr God, Herr Lucifer" to beware of
her because she is going to rise out of the ash and "eat men like air."
Analysis
"Lady Lazarus" is a complicated, dark, and brutal poem originally published in the
collection Ariel. Plath composed the poem during her most productive and fecund creative
period. It is considered one of Plath's best poems, and has been subject to a plethora of literary
criticism since its publication. It is commonly interpreted as an expression of Plath's suicidal
attempts and impulses. Its tone veers between menacing and scathing, and it has drawn

attention for its use of Holocaust imagery, similar to "Daddy." The title is an allusion to the
Biblical character, Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead.
The standard interpretation of the poem suggests that it is about multiple suicide attempts. The
details can certainly be understood in this framework. When the speaker says she "has done it
again," she means she has attempted suicide for the third time, after one accidental attempt
and one deliberate attempt in the past. Each attempt occurred in a different decade, and she is
now 30 years old. Now that she has been pulled back to life from this most recent attempt, her
"sour breath / Will vanish in a day," and her flesh will return to her bones. However, this
recovery is presented as a failure, whereas the suicide attempts are presented as
accomplishments - "Dying is an art" that she performs "exceptionally well." She seems to
believe she will reach a perfection through escaping her body.
By describing dying as an art, she includes a spectator to both her deaths and resurrections.
Because the death is a performance, it necessarily requires others. In large part, she kills
herself to punish them for driving her to it. The eager "peanut-crunching crowd" is invited but
criticized for its voyeuristic impulse. The crowd could certainly be understood to include the
reader himself, since he reads the poem to explore her dark impulses. She assumes that her
voyeurs are significantly invested - they would pay the "large charge" to see her scars and
heart.
However, she imbues this impulse with a harsh criticism by comparing the crowd to the
complacent Germans who stood aside while the Jews were thrown into concentration camps.
Further, the crowd ultimately proves less an encouragement than a burden when they also
attend the resurrection. She despises this second part of the process, and resents the presence
of others at that time. Whether this creates a vicious circle, in which that resentment is
partially responsible for the subsequent attempt, is implied but not explicitly stated. Critic
Robert Bagg explores the speaker's contradictory feelings towards the crowd by writing that
Plath "is not bound by any metaphysical belief in the self's limitations. Instead of resisting the
self's antagonists she derives a tremendous thrill from throwing her imagination into the act of
self-obliteration." She can destroy her body, but her imaginative self remains a performer,
always aware of the effect she has on others.
The poem can also be understood through a feminist lens, as a demonstration of the female
artist's struggle for autonomy in a patriarchal society. Lynda K. Bundtzen writes that "the
female creation of a male-artist god is asserting independent creative powers." From this
perspective, "Lady Lazarus" is not merely a confessional poem detailing depressive feelings,
but is also a statement on how the powerful male figure usurps Plath's creative powers but is
defeated by her rebirth. Though Lady Lazarus knows that "Herr Doktor" will claim possession
of her body and remains after forcing her suicide, she equally believes she will rise and "eat
men like air." Her creative powers can be stifled momentarily, but will always return stronger.
The poem can also be understood in a larger context, as a comment on the relationship
between poet and audience in a society that, as Pamela Annas claims, has separated creativity
and consumption. The crowd views Lady Lazarus/the poet/Plath as an object, and therefore
does not recognize her as a human being. Plath reflects this through her multiple references to

body parts separated from the whole. From this interpretation, Lady Lazarus's suicide then
becomes "an assertion of wholeness, an act of self-definition, and a last desperate act of
contempt toward the peanut-crunching crowd." The only way she can keep herself intact is to
destroy herself, and she does this rather than be turned into commodities. Though "Herr
Docktor" will peruse her remains for commodities, she will not have been defeated because of
her final act.
As has often been the case in Plath's poems, the Holocaust imagery has drawn much attention
from critics and readers. It is quite profuse in this poem. Lady Lazarus addresses a man as
"Herr Dokter," "Herr Enemy," "Herr God," and "Herr Lucifer." She describes her face as a
"Nazi lampshade" and as a"Jew linen." As previously described, one effect of these allusions
is to implicate the reader, make him or her complicit in passive voyeurism by comparing him
or her to the Germans who ignored the Holocaust. However, they also serve to establish the
horrific atmosphere than be understood as patriarchy, as a society of consumers, or as simply
cruel humans. No matter how one interprets the crowd in the poem, they complicate the
poem's meaning so that it is a sophisticated exploration of the responsibility we have for each
other's unhappiness, rather than simply a dire, depressive suicide note.
Form and Meter
Free Verse Tercets
Those three-line stanzas, right? Those are called tercets, and "Lady Lazarus" is made up of
twenty-eight of them. The tercets themselves are made up of short, chopped lines with a fair
mix of enjambment and end-stopped lines. When you read them out loud, they move quickly
and forcefully. It almost sounds like our speaker is biting or spitting her words out onto us.
Gross, but true.
Rhymes and Repetitions
But the formal elements don't stop there. We've also got our fair share of perfect rhyme (like
that of "beware," "hair," and "air" in the poem's final lines), and a ton of slant rhyme, too.
Plus, there's the anaphora of lines like "I do it so it feels like hell," and "I do it so it feels real."
While these various kinds of repetitions of sounds occur all over the place in "Lady Lazarus,"
they do not occur in a set pattern (the way rhymes occur in a poem like asonnet, for example).
The rhymes thus have an off-kilter feel to them. The poem is fast and freewheeling and you
never know when a rhyme or some other kind of repetition is going to pop off and smack you
in the face.
And really, these are some harsh rhymes that will smack you in the face. Sylvia does not play
around. She's wielding all her poetry powers to express Lady Lazarus's anger and despair, and
to show that death is the one arena of her life over which she seems to have control.

Speaker

The speaker of "Lady Lazarus" is Lady Lazarus herself, and in that sense, this poem almost
reads like a monologue. Here's the lowdown on the star of our show:
(1) She's extremely depressed, disturbed, and suicidal.
(2) Her name references the figure of Lazarus from the Biblea guy who died and was
resurrected by Jesus. But there's no Lady L in the Bible; our Lady is Plath's creation.
(3) Lady L is a whole lot like Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide not long after writing the
poem by sticking her head in a gas oven.
(4) Despite her similarities to Plath, it's important to remember that poems are not real life,
and that Plath has gone out of her way in this poem to speak in the voice of Lady Lazarus
not in her own voice. Thus, it's key that we talk about Lady Lazarus when we discuss this
poem, not Plath. While the poem may give us a tiny little window into Plath's feelings, we
can't assume that we know her just because we've read one of her poems. Or that we know
Lady L, just because we've got a bit of Plath's autobiography under our belts.
(5) Lady Lazarus is one powerful lady. Despite all of her suffering, she seems to have serious
control over the one thing that matters most to herher language. She may often feel like a
victim, but her words have serious bits. She ends the poem by "eat[ing] men like air." Go get
'em, Lady L.
Setting
The poem takes place in an imaginary space; Lady L doesn't tell us where she's speaking
from, what's around her, or even if she's in any place at all. But throughout the poem, she
evokes two main settings: the circus (or carnivalit's not clear which), and the Holocaust's
concentration camps. The circus atmosphere is creepy enough, with its "peanut-crunching
crowd" that undresses our speaker, but the concentration camp makes this look like child's
play.
In "Lady Lazarus," Plath describes the crematoriums that the Nazis used to burn Jews to
death. She doesn't provide long descriptions, but she gives us just enough informationthe
ash, the wedding ring, a gold fillingto instill in us a sense of horror. And rightfully so.
These are the objects left behind in the crematoriums; these are all that's left of the victims
who have been burned to death.
In other words, to make a long story short, Lady Lazarus takes us to a really dark place in this
poem.
Sound Check
As we discussed in the "Form and Meter" section, "Lady Lazarus" is a pretty intense sounding
poem. While it doesn't have a set rhyme or metrical scheme, there are tons of repeated sounds
(like rhymes) all over this poem. Combine these frequent erratic rhymes with super short lines
and you get a poem that launches surprise attack after surprise attack. Read it out loud, and
you'll get the poem's full effect.

"I do it so it feels like hell": POW

"I do it so it feels real": POW
Reading "Lady Lazarus" is a whole lot like being completely mismatched in the boxing arena.
Pow, pow, pow, the poem says. The poem's also got tons of internal rhymes (in phrases like
"the grave cave ate"). This is powerful, punching language that makes us feel weak in
comparison to the speaker. As Plath's readers, we are left whimpering in the corner, while she
rises, like a phoenix, from any punch we might throw back.
What's Up With the Title?
"Lady Lazarus" is a poem spoken byyup, that's rightLady Lazarus.
Lady Lazarus is a figment of Plath's imagination. There never was a real Lady L, no matter
how hard you Google.
But Plath was a smart cookie, and she used the name of her speaker as an allusion to Lazarus
(from the Bible). Lazarus is a character from the Gospel of John who died and was resurrected
by the one and only Jesus. The Bible doesn't give much detail about exactly what he looks
like when he is raised, but the idea of someone who's been dead for four days suddenly
coming back to life is kind of creepy and miraculous at the same timejust like it is in this
poem, "Lady Lazarus."
And like Lazarus, Lady L experiences death and returns from it, but unlike Lazarus, Lady L
accomplishes this feat all on her own. She is in control of her own destinyeven if that
destiny is another death. That's a bragging right that the original Lazarus can't claim.
For more on Lady L, check out what we've got to say about her in the "Speaker" section.
Calling Card
Brutal Metaphors
Plath's poetry is known for its brutal metaphors. Her Lady Lazarus is depressed, disturbed,
and suicidal. The most direct way for Plath to impart to us the horror of Lady L's scenario is
to make references to the Holocaust, the most horrific event of the twentieth century. Again
and again, Lady Lazarus compares herself to Jewish victims of the Nazis. It takes a brave (or
some might say, crazy) poet to elevate her speaker's suffering to the level of Holocaust victim,
but Plath doesn't hold back.
These intense, brutal, and unforgiving metaphors are the hallmark of Plath's poetry. Her
poem "Daddy" deals with vampires and communicating with the dead, her
poem"Mirror" disturbs readers with an image of an old woman as a fish deep in the water, and
her poem called "Tulips" describes the flowers not as beautiful, but like terrifying, angry
animals. We can count on Plath to take the everyday world and twist it in some terrifying way.
LADY LAZARUS THEMES

Little Words, Big Ideas

Death
If we had to sum up "Lady Lazarus" in just one word, what do you think we'd say? The
speaker is obsessed with death, both literal and figurative. She's attempted to commit suicide
in the past, and...
Violence
"Lady Lazarus" is an undeniably violent poem. It's filled with mangled bodies, fierce circus
crowds, and murderous Nazis. The best way that Lady Lazarus (and, for that matter, Sylvia
Plath) can com...
Suffering
"Lady Lazarus" is full of fun times, huh? Oh wait. The big, controlling metaphor of the poem
is Lady Lazarus's comparison of herself with the fate of the Jews who were slaughtered (all
six million...
"Daddy"
Summary
"Daddy," comprised of sixteen five-line stanzas, is a brutal and venomous poem commonly
understood to be about Plath's deceased father, Otto Plath.
The speaker begins by saying that he "does not do anymore," and that she feels like she has
been a foot living in a black shoe for thirty years, too timid to either breathe or sneeze. She
insists that she needed to kill him (she refers to him as "Daddy"), but that he died before she
had time. She describes him as heavy, like a "bag full of God," resembling a statue with one
big gray toe and its head submerged in the Atlantic Ocean. She remembers how she at one
time prayed for his return from death, and gives a German utterance of grief (which translates
literally to "Oh, you").
She knows he comes from a Polish town that was overrun by "wars, wars, wars," but one of
her Polack friends has told her that there are several towns of that name. Therefore, she cannot
uncover his hometown, where he put his "foot" and "root."
She also discusses how she could never find a way to talk to him. Even before she could
speak, she thought every German was him, and found the German language "obscene." In
fact, she felt so distinct from him that she believed herself a Jew being removed to a
concentration camp. She started to talk like a Jew and to feel like a Jew in several different
ways. She wonders in fact, whether she might actually be a Jew, because of her similarity to a
gypsy. To further emphasize her fear and distance, she describes him as the Luftwaffe, with a
neat mustache and a bright blue Aryan eye. She calls him a "Panzer-man," and says he is less

like God then like the black swastika through which nothing can pass. In her mind, "Every
woman adores a Fascist," and the "boot in the face" that comes with such a man.
When she remembers Daddy, she thinks of him standing at the blackboard, with a cleft chin
instead of a cleft foot. However, this transposition does not make him a devil. Instead, he is
like the black man who "Bit [her] pretty red heart in two." He died when she was ten, and she
tried to join him in death when she was twenty. When that attempt failed, she was glued back
together. At this point, she realized her course - she made a model of Daddy and gave him
both a "Meinkampf look" and "a love of the rack and the screw." She promises him that she is
"finally through;" the telephone has been taken off the hook, and the voices can no longer get
through to her.
She considers that if she has killed one man, then she has in fact killed two. Comparing him to
a vampire, she remembers how he drank her blood for a year, but then realizes the duration
was closer to seven years. She tells him he can lie back now. There is a stake in his heart, and
the villagers who despised him now celebrate his death by dancing on his corpse. She
concludes by announcing, "Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm through."
Analysis
"Daddy" is perhaps Sylvia Plath's best-known poem. It has elicited a variety of distinct
reactions, from feminist praise of its unadulterated rage towards male dominance, to wariness
at its usage of Holocaust imagery. It has been reviewed and criticized by hundreds and
hundreds of scholars, and is upheld as one of the best examples of confessional poetry.
It is certainly a difficult poem for some: its violent imagery, invocation of Jewish suffering,
and vitriolic tone can make it a decidedly uncomfortable reading experience. Overall, the
poem relates Plath's journey of coming to terms with her father's looming figure; he died
when she was eight. She casts herself as a victim and him as several figures, including a Nazi,
vampire, devil, and finally, as a resurrected figure her husband, whom she has also had to kill.
Though the final lines have a triumphant tone, it is unclear whether she means she has gotten
"through" to him in terms of communication, or whether she is "through" thinking about him.
Plath explained the poem briefly in a BBC interview:
The poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. The father died while she thought he
was God. Her case is complicated by the fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother
very possibly part Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyze each other she
has to act out the awful little allegory once over before she is free of it.
In other words, contradiction is at the heart of the poem's meaning. Neither its triumph nor its
horror is to be taken as the sum total of her intention. Instead, each element is contradicted by
its opposite, which explains how it shoulders so many distinct interpretations.
This sense of contradiction is also apparent in the poem's rhyme scheme and organization. It
uses a sort of nursery rhyme, singsong way of speaking. There are hard sounds, short lines,
and repeated rhymes (as in "Jew," "through," "do," and "you"). This establishes and reinforces

her status as a childish figure in relation to her authoritative father. This relationship is also
clear in the name she uses for him - "Daddy"- and in her use of "oo" sounds and a childish
cadence. However, this childish rhythm also has an ironic, sinister feel, since the chant-like,
primitive quality can feel almost like a curse. One critic wrote that the poem's "simplistic,
insistent rhythm is one form of control, the obsessive rhyming and repeated short phrases are
others, means by which she attempts to charm and hold off evil spirits." In other words, the
childish aspects have a crucial, protective quality, rather than an innocent one.
"Daddy" can also be viewed as a poem about the individual trapped between herself and
society. Plath weaves together patriarchal figures a father, Nazis, a vampire, a husband and
then holds them all accountable for history's horrors. Like "The Colossus," "Daddy" imagines
a larger-than-life patriarchal figure, but here the figure has a distinctly social, political aspect.
Even the vampire is discussed in terms of its tyrannical sway over a village. In this
interpretation, the speaker comes to understand that she must kill the father figure in order to
break free of the limitations that it places upon her. In particular, these limitations can be
understood as patriarchal forces that enforce a strict gender structure. It has the feel of an
exorcism, an act of purification. And yet the journey is not easy. She realizes what she has to
do, but it requires a sort of hysteria. In order to succeed, she must have complete control,
since she fears she will be destroyed unless she totally annihilates her antagonist.
The question about the poem's confessional, autobiographical content is also worth exploring.
The poem does not exactly conform to Plath's biography, and her above-cited explanation
suggests it is a carefully-constructed fiction. And yet its ambivalence towards male figures
does correspond to the time of its composition - she wrote it soon after learning that her
husband Ted Hughes had left her for another woman. Further, the mention of a suicide attempt
links the poem to her life.
However, some critics have suggested that the poem is actually an allegorical representation
of her fears of creative paralysis, and her attempt to slough off the "male muse." Stephen
Gould Axelrod writes that "at a basic level, 'Daddy' concerns its own violent, transgressive
birth as a text, its origin in a culture that regards it as illegitimate a judgment the speaker
hurls back on the patriarch himself when she labels him a bastard." The father is perceived as
an object and as a mythical figure (many of them, in fact), and never really attains any real
human dimensions. It is less a person than a stifling force that puts its boot in her face to
silence her. From this perspective, the poem is inspired less by Hughes or Otto than by agony
over creative limitations in a male literary world. However, even this interpretation begs
something of an autobiographical interpretation, since both Hughes and her father were
representations of that world.
Plath's usage of Holocaust imagery has inspired a plethora of critical attention. She was not
Jewish but was in fact German, yet was obsessed with Jewish history and culture. Several of
her poems utilize Holocaust themes and imagery, but this one features the most striking and
disturbing ones. She imagines herself being taken on a train to "Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen,"
and starting to talk like a Jew and feel like a Jew. She refers to her father as a "panzer-man,"
and notes his Aryan looks and his "Luftwaffe" brutality. One of the leading articles on this

topic, written by Al Strangeways, concludes that Plath was using her poetry to understand the
connection between history and myth, and to stress the voyeurism that is an implicit part of
remembering. Plath had studied the Holocaust in an academic context, and felt a connection
to it; she also felt like a victim, and wanted to combine the personal and public in her work to
cut through the stagnant double-talk of Cold War America. She certainly uses Holocaust
imagery, but does so alongside other violent myths and history, including those of Electra,
vampirism, and voodoo. Strangeways writes that, "the Holocaust assumed a mythic dimension
because of its extremity and the difficulty of understanding it in human terms, due to the
mechanical efficiency with which it was carried out, and the inconceivably large number of
victims." In other words, its shocking content is not an accident, but is rather an attempt to
consider how the 20th century's great atrocity reflects and escalates a certain human quality.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine that any of Sylvia Plath's poems could leave the reader unmoved.
"Daddy" is evidence of her profound talent, part of which rested in her unabashed
confrontation with her personal history and the traumas of the age in which she lived. That
she could write a poem that encompasses both the personal and historical is clear in "Daddy."
Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay
NAZIS AND THE HOLOCAUST
Symbol Analysis
The speaker indicates that her German father is like a Nazi, and that she is like a Jew. This is a
very powerful metaphor for how the speaker feels like she is a victim of her father, or perhaps
for how she feels about men in general. But she doesn't come right out and call him a Nazi.
Instead, she uses metaphors, imagery, and subtle wordplay to show us that he's like a Nazi.
Lines 29-35: Here, the speaker uses a train engine as a metaphor for the German language,
which her father speaks. The train is taking the speaker to a concentration camp, like the Jews
were during the Holocaust, which is ametaphor for how she feels that she is a victim of her
father.
Line 42: "Luftwaffe" means air force in German, and specifically refers to the German air
force of World War II. By using German, the speaker is remaining subtle in her metaphorical
incrimination of her father as Nazi. She says that he is connected to the German air force, not
that he's a Nazi straight-out.
Lines 43-44: Here, the speaker uses imagery to build the metaphor that her father is a Nazi.
The neat mustache is an allusion (a subtle reference) to Hitler's mustache. The bright blue
Aryan eyes refer to the Nazi's ideal race of people.
Line 45: The German word for a tank is "panzer," and the men who manned German army
tanks were called "Panzermen," so this reference goes along with "Luftwaffe." The use of
German subtly connects the speaker's father with Nazi Germany.

Lines 46-47: Here the connection with Nazis becomes more blatant. The speaker's father
changes from one metaphor being like God to another being a swastika, the symbol of
Nazism. Line 47 is an example of hyperbole, or extreme exaggeration the swastika is not
just black, but so black it blots out the sky.
Line 48: Fascists, including the Nazis, are known to be tyrannical and cruel. Doesn't sound
like something anyone would love, much less something every women loves.
Line 65: Here, we've moved from connecting the speaker's father to the Nazis to connecting
the model of him the speaker's husband to Hitler. Mein Kampf is a book written by Hitler,
so saying that this man has a Meinkampflook is an allusion to Hitler.
VAMPIRES
Symbol Analysis
At the end of this poem, the metaphor for the speaker's father and husband, and potentially all
men, shifts from Nazis to vampires. These men go from being depicted as living horrors to
undead horrors. We know that the speaker's father is dead, so it's super creepy to think that
he's come back to haunt her as a vampire.
Lines 72-74: Here, the speaker blatantly calls her husband a vampire. At first, we think this is
just a simple metaphor if you're really angry at someone, using the word "vampire" would
be mean, but not terribly creepy. But then the metaphor is extended. The vampire has sucked
the narrator's blood for seven years, probably the length of their marriage. This is a vivid
metaphor for the pain that their relationship must have caused the speaker.
Lines 76-79: Here, the vampire metaphor is transferred from the model of the father to the
father himself, who has died a vampire's death, with a stake through his heart. The
metaphorical villagers, who probably stand for the speaker's friends or emotions, always knew
that the father was a vampire, so they're dancing on his dead body.
SIZE
Symbol Analysis
The speaker in this poem describes herself as small, and her father as immense. But for the
most part she doesn't just come out and say so: she shows us with imagery and metaphors.
This adds to the feel that the speaker is the victim in this poem, and makes her father seem
more looming and scary.
Lines 1-5: These lines contain a metaphor comparing the speaker's father to a shoe in which
she lives. She doesn't really live in a shoe, but uses this metaphor to show us how trapped she
feels by the memories of her father. The speaker, then, is small enough to live inside a shoe,
and her father, as a metaphorical shoe, is big enough for someone to live in.
Lines 9-11: These lines make the father seem huge. The speaker is using themetaphor of a
statue to describe her father, but this is no ordinary statue it stretches across the entire

United States! But the speaker doesn't say this plainly she has to use lots of other figurative
language within this metaphor. Saying that her father's toe is as big as a San Francisco seal is
an example ofsimile, because of the use of the word "as." Then, she uses imagery to show us
that the statue's head is all the way over in the Atlantic.
COMMUNICATION
Symbol Analysis
If a fan of Cool Hand Luke, a classic movie starring Paul Newman, took a look at this poem,
she'd probably quote the film and say, "What we have here is failure to communicate." As we
have seen, the speaker has a hard time talking to her father, and eventually stops trying. Yet,
this entire poem is addressed to the speaker's father; with 80 lines, it seems she desperately
wants to say something to him. But, remember, her father is dead, so there's no way she could
possibly get through to him. The knowledge that her father will never read this poem is
probably what enables the speaker to write it. We won't analyze every time the speaker
addresses her father because that would be the entire poem, but we'll take a look at specific
instances where she expresses trouble communicating.
Lines 6, 51, 68, 75, 80: The use of the name "Daddy" in these lines is an example
of apostrophe, or direct address to a person who is absent.
Line 14: Prayer, as shown in this line, is a way of communicating with God, which is what
this speaker is trying to do to get her father back. But it doesn't work she "used to" pray, but
doesn't anymore.
Lines 24-28: Here, the speaker tells us straight-up that she could never talk to her father
we're guessing she means while he was alive. We get a couple cool metaphors here. The first
is that the speaker's tongue gets stuck in her jaw, which is a metaphor for being unable to talk.
But then we get a metaphor for the metaphor the jaw turns into a barbed wire snare. In line
27, "Ich, ich, ich, ich," is not just repetition, but onomatopoeia, which means the words sound
like what they are trying to get across, which is stammering. This line sounds like someone
who was trying to speak German while her tongue was in a snare.
Lines 68-70: The communication has now been terminated. These lines picture
communication in a pretty cool way, though. The metaphor here is comparing the telephone to
a plant the phone is cut off at the root, and voices are like worms. It's as if there's a
metaphorical telephone plant growing on her father's grave, with roots instead of wires. But
it's uprooted now.

Form and Meter

Free Verse Quintains
Free verse means that there is no set pattern of rhythm or rhyme, and a quintain is a five-line
stanza. There are 16 quintains breaking up this long poem.

Even though there is no specific rhyme scheme in "Daddy," there are a lot of end and internal
rhymes. The end rhyme started with the first line, which ended in "do," and is repeated often,
all the way to the last line, which ends in "through." The oo sound is overwhelming; just look
at stanza 10, which ends in these two lines:
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
This poem is held together by sound as much as meaning, and rhymes and repetition can be
found throughout.
Just like rhyme plays a big part in this poem without having a specific scheme, rhythm is
important here even though it doesn't fit into a specific pattern. There is a lot of iambic verse,
which means that the line is patterned by unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables.
Let's look at line 1 as an example (the stressed syllables are bold and italic):
You do not do, you do not do.
While this iambic rhythm is not carried throughout the poem regularly, it pops up every now
and then, making this feel lilting and rhythmic, but not over-the-top singsong-y.
Speaker
Usually we're super-strict about keeping the speaker of a poem separate from the author of a
poem. After all, poets often create fictional personas who they imagine to be speaking their
work not everything they write down is what they personally believe. But the line between
the real-life Sylvia Plath and the speaker of "Daddy" is blurry. Plath's poetry is usually
considered to be part of the Confessional movement, and "Daddy" certainly reads like a
personal confession. Plath's father was a German immigrant, like the father in the poem. He
died when she was young (eight years old), though not quite the same age as in the poem (ten
years old). Plath, similar to the speaker in the poem, tried to commit suicide. Plath was
married to her husband for about seven years when she wrote this poem, and the speaker's
husband sucked her blood for seven years.
Despite these similarities, the speaker in this poem is different from Plath, as the characters of
the speaker's father and husband are different from Plath's own father and husband. She has
made herself, and them, into characters. Common sense and fact tell us that Plath's father was
not really a Nazi, and her husband was not a vampire.
We can guess how Plath may have felt about her husband and father, but we shouldn't take
anything about her relationships with these two men as fact from this poem. Sure, this poem
may reflect how Plath felt at the moment she was writing this poem, but it would be unfair to
make generalized conclusions about her relationships from it. One of the main benefits of
writing poetry rather than, say, a memoir, is that it doesn't have to be non-fiction. You can

stretch the truth in poetry, as Plath does in this poem.

The speaker is a persona that Plath created so that she could write a poem that may be based
on her life, but isn't trapped by having to stick to the literal truth. Besides, if this poem were
simply autobiographical, we'd miss out on all the other cool meanings that it could have like
"Daddy" being a metaphor for men in general, or a symbol of evil in the world.
So, now that we know the speaker is different from Plath, well, who exactly is she? She's a
tortured woman, who lost her father when she was so young that he seemed huge and
powerful, like God. Memories of him have caused her pain they've made her want to die.
When dying doesn't work, the speaker tries to find a husband just like her father. Her playful
rhythm and rhyme juxtapose with the desperation and violence of her language, to make her
words poisonous to these two men and their power over her. This poem is like a stake in the
heart of her disturbing memories by the end of the poem, she has killed them.
Setting
This poem shifts settings and most of them are metaphorical. So, instead of being in an actual
place, we're taken from place to place in the speaker's mind.
The setting in her mind starts out as the black shoe in which the speaker claims to live, but
which is actually a metaphor for her father. Then it moves to encompass the whole of the
United States, mentioning San Francisco seals and the beautiful waters of a Massachusetts
beach. This setting seems like it should be beautiful, but then we remember that there's a
statue of the speaker's dead father across the entire United States, and that's pretty creepy.
Then we move to a place that is in Poland, but where German is spoken, that seems to be the
place from which the speaker's father emigrated. We hear that this town has been destroyed by
war, and the beauty of the beach from earlier in the poem is lost to the desolation of battle.
But, since this town has a common name (which we never hear), we can't know which
specific town the speaker is talking about.
Then, the poem is in Germany, but jumps back in time to World War II, and the speaker is on
a train across the German countryside. She's headed to a concentration camp. Perhaps on the
train, she sees the mountains of the Tyrol range, at the border of Austria and Italy, and thinks
of Vienna, in Austria. We hear a lot about World War II there are air forces, tanks, and her
father turns into a Hitler-like character. There's even a swastika that blots out the sky. This
part of the setting is sinister.
We get a brief break from the sinister setting, and are taken into the speaker's father's
classroom. But just when we've caught our breath, we jump right back into a dark setting.
This time, though, we're not just somewhere in history we're somewhere mystical. There are
devils, telephones with roots, and vampires. This is the kind of place where it's possible to put
the bones of a dead person back together with glue.

By the end of the poem, we're in a village which, potentially, is just a part of this same
devilish place. The villagers are celebrating the death of a vampire, which gives us an idea of
the kind of small town this is full of suspicion and mysticism.
So, courtesy of our speaker's dark imagination, we've journeyed from the US to Germany,
then back in time to World War II, and then even farther, to a mystical time when villagers
believed in vampires.
Sound Check
This poem sounds like a dark, disturbing nursery rhyme. Violence has never before sounded
so playful.
But the playfulness the rhythmic lilting and over-the-top rhyme makes the violence even
creepier. This is the kind of nursery rhyme that the speaker's evil father would have sung to
her.
There's a lot of rhyme in this poem even though it has no formal rhyme scheme. Oosounds
completely overwhelm this poem, but instead of being comforting, like they would be in a
nursery rhyme, they're suffocating. They're so thick they drown the reader. Here's a quick tour
of this poem's oo sounds: "do," "shoe," "achoo," "you," "blue," "du," "two," "root," "Jew,"
"true," "goo," "boot," and "brute" and that's not even the whole poem, and it doesn't count
repetition. All of this gushing oo makes this poem seem more disturbing than a nursery rhyme
it's not a bedtime story, but a howl in the night.
What's Up With the Title?
The title "Daddy" sets this up as an address to the speaker's father. Even though the word
"daddy" is only used six other times in this 80-line poem, since the poem is titled "Daddy," we
can guess from the start who "you" is in this poem.
It's important, though, that the poem is titled "Daddy" and not "Father," or even "Dad."
"Daddy" is an affectionate name, one that a child would call her father when she's being cute,
or when she wants something, like ice cream, or soda, or a pony. Also, little girls who are their
fathers' pets are often referred to as "Daddy's little girl."
So it's ironic that he speaker uses the word "Daddy" to address the father that she has
characterized as a Nazi, devil, and vampire. But the title isn't the only part of this poem that
doesn't quite match the violent images of the speaker's father the related "sound" of the
poem is as contrast as well. It seems to us that the title "Daddy" fits with the singsong rhyme
and other childish aspects of this poem, like the word "gobbledygoo" in line 42. But this
playfulness, paired with the violence she describes, shows us the speaker's internal struggle
between loving and hating her deceased father.
Calling Card

Playful Violence
Plath sometimes uses such playful language, rhythm, and rhyme that you'd think you were
reading a nursery rhyme. But don't be tricked her singsong writing is not about nursery
rhyme topics, but about life, death, femininity, and depression serious, tragic matters. Plath's
not afraid to tackle disturbing topics, and the playfulness of her language makes the oftenviolent images in her poetry more shocking.

Ted Hughes
Wind
Overview
As 'Wind' is about the power of the forces of the natural world it can be used in an essay with
any other of the poems.It is an excellent poem to use because there is so much to say about it.
In this poem, Hughes describes some extreme weather conditions; namely a wind that reaches
toward hurricane force. The poem starts with the house,moves outside to describe how the
landscape is affected by the wind, and then in the final stanza returns back to the house.
Hughes manages to create in this poem a tremendous dramatic picture ofa landscape attacked
by extreme weather. There are many images of the power and violence of the storm-wind. For
instance, in the second stanza,Hughes imagines the wind as being like some huge AngloSaxon warrior:
'Wind wielded blade-light.'
In our modern homes we can feel pretty protected and distant form nature. And perhaps this
can make us a little arrogant about environmental issues. In this poem, Hughes tries to reconnect us to nature and show how vulnerable we actually are to environmental catastrophe.
But as well as being frightening and awesome,the wind is also creative; it breaks things apart
but this allows them tobe re-created, or seen afresh. Even the 'hills had new places.'
If you have ever stood high-up somewhere exposed on a windy day you will know the feeling
you get of a strong wind, clearing your head, blowing out the cobwebs and generally
freshening things up.
The wind in this poem has a similar effect. Its capacity to control, shape,change and create
things makes it a possible metaphor for creativity, forwriting, for the inspiration that energises
the poet.
It is a terrific poem. So just enjoy listening to it, concentrating hardon hearing and feeling and
seeing the images...

Many of the words and lines and images in the poem create a sense of danger. 'The woods
crashing through darkness', for instance, makes us hear the panic and destruction unleashed
by the storm-wind. 'The booming hills'may make us think of explosions, of bombs and
detonations, or of a warning drum, perhaps. Either way, it is as if the hills are being blown
apart in some kind of war.
Poetic technics
Hughes' poem is packed with imagery. Almost every line contains a vivid, dramatic image.
For instance, the first line 'This house has been far out at sea all night', contains a sort of
hidden simile or metaphor. If the house has been out to sea it must be like a boat.
The simple words 'far out' and 'all night' are also powerfully suggestive in this context. A boat
far out at sea during a terrible storm, is isolated and in considerable danger. 'All night'
suggests that the house/boat has had to endure the worst of the storm-wind for what seemed to
the occupants a very long time. Think of being awake 'all night' to get a sense of how long
that can seem to be.
The effect is to convey just how powerful, intense, prolonged and dangerousthis storm-wind
must have been to make a solid house feel like a ship all at sea.
A similar effect is worked in the line 'And feel the roots of the house move' in the final stanza.
Here the house is compared to a tree to convey the fact that the wind seems to have got under
Hughes' home and made it vulnerable, as if it might be ripped out, uprooted from its
environment. The work of man is shown to be no more secure than any other part of nature.
Hughes' sensual imagery makes us experience the poem. Drag and drop the three icons onto
the relevant quotes in the poem:
As well as the sensual imagery, there is a number of key metaphors and similes in the poem...
In the exam you would only need to pick out a few of the key images.The bulk of marks go
for your analysis of their effect.
Form
Like 'Hawk Roosting', 'Wind' is written in six, four line stanzas.
However, the flow of the poem is very different. Where many lines in 'Hawk Roosting' stop at
the end of the line, with a full stop, Hughes uses enjambment in Wind.
Enjambment is when sentences, in poems,run over the end of one line and into the next
one(s). In 'Wind' lines spill into each other and the end of one stanza runs into the start of the
next.This effect is enhanced by Hughes's punctuation:
In 'HR' Hughes uses 14 full stops or colons.
Click the correct answer to the question below:

Together, the enjambment, punctuation and the varying line lengths create the sense of
movement and energy in the poem, as if everything, even the poem, has become slightly
unfixed by the power of the wind.
The enjambment also allows Hughes to create effects such as the isolation of the words 'The
house' at the end of the fourth stanza. These two small words seem to hang, exposed
perilously, at the end of the line.
The irregular rhyme scheme is like an attempt to order and control the poem, and the wind.
But the wind is bursting with energy and cannot be restrained by either the order of the
stanzas, or by the control of a rhyme scheme.
Image:

Effect:

As in 'Hawk Roosting' Hughes uses here the device of changing the

'The tent of the hills
size and scale of things. So in order to convey the force of the wind
drummed and strained
Hughes reduces something as massive and permanent as a range of
its guy-rope.'
'hills' to something as flimsy and vulnerable as a 'tent'.
'The house/ Rang like
some fine green goblet
The same technique works here where a solid house is made to feel
in the note/ That any
as fragile as a fine glass.
second would shatter
it.'
There is a lot going on in these two lines. First the wind is personified
as a kind of casual God throwing away what it rejects (the magpie).
'The wind flung a
In the second half of the line a simile is used to compare a gull to an
magpie away and a
iron bar. And the sound of the lines is muscular; the rhythm is like a
black-/ back gull bent
tongue twister. Working together they imitate the physical bending of
like an iron bar slowly.'
the gull. Alliteration, rhyme, and single syllables combine to create
this physical effect. It is as if the line itself is being twisted and bent.
The stones here are personified. As have been the woods, the fields
(quivering), the sky (a grimace) wind, and the windows (tremble). It
'Hearing the stones cry
is as if the whole landscape is alive and suffering from the ground to
out under the horizons.'
the sky. The personification also blurs the distinction between the
human and 'natural' world?. It reconnects us with our environment.

Subject
The poem is about how extreme weather can make even modern man feel frightened and
vulnerable and part of the natural environment.
The wind may be a metaphor for the power of creativity.

Attitude
The wind is frightening, but the tone of the poem is one full of excitement, awe, and
anticipation.
Hughes isn't criticising the wind. Although perhaps he is a criticising human for forgetting how
powerful nature can be.
Style
The poem is packed with sensual imagery, metaphor, simile, and personification. Every line has
a strong, vivid image in it.
The form of the poem, the fluid lines and stanzas matches the way the wind moves the
landscape.
Analysis:
Wind is one of Ted Hughes most formidable poems, showing an entirely different aspect to
this element. Unlike many other poets such as John Clare (A Morning Breeze), Hughes is not
concerned with describing the beauty and serenity of a balmy breeze; his aim is solely to
communicate the relentless, godly strength and power of the wind that he knows from stormy
days on the moors of the Pennines, using pathetic fallacy as the main device to describe both
the wind and its victims.
In the first of six four-line stanzas, Hughes describes the tempestuous night that has
passed. The opening line is both simple but striking, comparing a solid house to a flimsy boat
that has been tossed and smashed in a sea gale, with the words far out and all night
suggesting the house is marooned in isolation. Like terrified, panicked animals, the woods have
been crashing through darkness while the hills are booming with the thunderous sound of
the wind. Personification is used to convey its almighty, dangerous power: it was stampeding
the fields while the land was futilely floundering in the blinding wet. The oceanic
metaphor continues, conjuring up an image of a night mastered by the storm that rages through
the dark. However, the beginning of the second verse is misleading: till day rose indicates that
finally the storm is over, whereas, in fact, the ensuing chaos is almost more intense, undiluted
by the rain that saturates the first four lines.
No longer black, the sky has now adopted the unnatural, ominous colour of orange, and
as a consequence of the previous night, the hills had new places: the wind is so powerful that
it has the ability to alter the very landscape it rules. It is also armed and ready to do battle with
the earth again with renewed vigour, demonstrated by the martial image wind wielded bladelight. Imagining the wind as an Anglo-Saxon warrior, Hughes shows that it has harnessed the
power of light to its weaponry, and conveys a crazed frenzy. It is as though the wind even has a
face, with the black and emerald the colours of its pupil and iris. However, they are
luminous, and the light from its wild face is flexing like the lens of a mad eye: a surreal
concept conveying brilliantly the strange light and unpredictability in the aftermath of a
storm.
The third stanza opens with the line, at noon, I scaled along the house side, as Hughes
continues with the metaphor of the house as a boat. Inching along the wall for protection, he

reaches as far as the coal house door; by starting a new line after as far as, Hughes creates
an exaggerated climax before recording the small distance that he actually managed to
navigate. This first-person perspective is most effective in conveying the poets vulnerability.
Hunched and stooped, he dares to look up just once, and immediately the balls of his eyes feel
dented by the brunt wind. This shocking sensory image of an eyeball being violently
assaulted by a hard object conveys the brute force of the wind. The internal rhyme of dented
and tent adds to the harsh, metallic feel of the verse, continuing with the tent of the hills
drummed and strained its guyrope. Not only is the physical shape of the curved landscape
depicted, this metaphorical image of movement shows the inescapable wind as being almost
within the earth, its formidable power nearly snapping the ropes that anchor the hills to the
ground.
In the literal and figurative the fields quivering, Hughes shows not only the rippling
appearance of the land, but personifies it as well: previously, the fields were stampeded by the
wind, now they tremble in submission and distress. The sky too is mastered by the wind, with
an arresting description of the shape of the horizon as a grimace, wincing in fear and pain.
This is followed by the onomatopoeic, bang and vanish with a flap: such is the nature of these
words that they demand to be read quickly and suddenly, demonstrating the unpredictable state
of the land at the merciless hands of the wind, and the upheaval and tension it causes. With
careless ease, the wind flung a magpie away: it is personified as it hurls a bird as
thoughtlessly as a human might a discarded object. Flung also indicates a temper. In contrast
to the rapid pace of this stanza, the reader is then forced to slow down with the monosyllabic
black-back gull bent like an iron bar slowly, which links closely with the image being
described, as the assonantal rhythm mirrors the meaning. Material is of no consequence to the
wind, as it easily alters the shape of both metal and earth, and nature is helpless in the face of
the winds demented onslaught.
The house is deliberately placed in the stanza above the rest of its sentence to create
impact for the opening of the next verse, as it matches the harsh assonance of sounds of iron
and slowly. It also sits alone, perilously exposed. The wind has now reached a frequency so
powerful that it could shatter Hughes home like a fine green goblet, showing that compared
to the wind, mere bricks and mortar are extremely delicate and fragile. The wind has again
reached inside its subjects: before, it threatened to burst from within the hills; now, it howls
inside the house at a frequency that could shatter glass. There is a sense of urgency and tension
in the words any second would shatter it, with Hughes and his house now in immediate
danger.
Despite the reassurance of being deep in chairs by a great fire, this is no match for
the wind, and Hughes and his family are uneasy and unsettled by its presence. It has invaded
their minds, for they cannot entertain book, though, or each other. Instead, they sit brooding,
watching the fire while they feel the roots of the house move. There is no security to be
found, and again, the house is in danger of being hurled away, and shifts to rearrange its
position in the earth. The windows not only tremble with the force of the wind that hammers
them, but are personified as afraid, desperate to seek shelter within the walls of the house. In
the concluding lines, they hear the stones cry out under the horizons: even the prehistoric

stones are weeping in desperation at the cruel havoc caused by the wind.
Hughes uses enjambement to create fluidity much like the flow of the wind, although
there is no regular rhyme pattern, showing that its inexhaustible energy cannot be limited.
Hughes portrays how its sheer elemental force masters the land, sky, light, fire and stones in an
assault of sense images which reflect its immeasurable rage. However, the tone is not one of
criticism, but of awe at its power. He also highlights the insignificance of man compared to
such strength, with the personification serving to blur the line between nature and humanity, as
all are helpless in the face of the wind.
Examination at the Womb-Door
Hughes' Styles of Writing
Ted Hughes' creatively uses myths in his writing and descriptive animal life and nature.
Hughes' attitude to animals was a direct and self-conscious one, and he did not see them as
strange or alien as like creatures. A lot of his poetry reflects many of the things that have
happened in his life, and expresses a lot of the feelings Hughes has felt. He was enchanted by
the beauty of the natural world, frequently portraying its cruel and savage temperament in his
work as a reflection of his own personal suffering and mystical beliefs. His poems express
much intensity, precise observation, and power. Hughes early poetry is emotionally intense and
features elaborate imagery and natural settings. He wrote the verse/drama Orghast in an
invented language and expressed his increasing interest in mythology especially in his poems
"Crow (1970), Cave Birds (1975), and Season Songs (1976). He also mixed mythology
with romance inWodwo (1967). He was a large contributor and leader in mythical poems. He
turned his real life feelings and situations into mythical poems especially when his first and
second wife die.
Ted Hughes poems usually reflected his life and what was going on in it at the time. This poem
was clearly written after Teds wives had killed themselves. Ted Hughes used to write about
love and compassion up until the loves of his life took their own lives. He became dark and
dismal, and it reflected in his works. In this poem, Ted seems to be describing how death has
taken over his life. He says death rules over every part of our body; it even rules over life itself.
I think Ted was feeling in a state of great mourn when he was writing this. Ted, however, shows
that he is strong when he says that he is stronger than death. He is alive, and has overcome the
death in his life of his wives. Ted Hughes also throws in some things about nature which
reflects in a great deal of his works. He talks about the rainy, stony earth, and space. In an
analysis of this poem done by Oscar Fernandez Adria, however, it was said that it is important
to look at Ted's beliefs and his created mythology. His concept of death was taken from
Buddhism and Sufism, which believed that the soul was immortal. It believed in reincarnation
and predestination. In reading this analysis, I feel like it is evident that Ted feels that one's soul
revives another body. When he says that death takes over all of you, I think he is implying the
rebirth of a person.
Titles Examination at the Womb-Door refers to a test and the place where it is taken.
The Dead refers to those who do not live anymore.

Examination at the Womb-Door shows us, through a question-answer structure, that Death
owns everything in life but man itself.
The Dead presents how death acts on people and how dead people act when dead.
Both poets, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, create each one his and her own view of this
universal fact and explain it with particular different words.
Ted Hughes in Examination at the Womb-Door uses as said before a questionanswer structure to create this poem because it is as the title states an exam. Here
someone maybe the author himself, maybe not makes the examination asking for the one
who owns (line 1 to line 5; line 13 and line 14) all human aspects see feet (L1), face
(L2), lungs (L3), muscles (L4), guts (L5), brains (L6), blood (L7), eyes (L8) and
tongue (L9) and who is also the one that possesses control over time and space, who owns
the whole rainy, stony earth? (L13) and all of space (L14). This one human-like character is
Death (line 1 to line 10; line 13 and line 14).
In The Dead, Death is not personified but it is the atmosphere that surrounds the whole
poems situation. It is the settlement and the creator of the dead men (L3) that are lulled in
the ample womb of the full-tilt globe (L4). Death appears to make men want no proud
paternal kingdom come (L6) and They seek only oblivion (L8), instead of feeling stronger
that Death (L19) as it appears in Hughess poem.
In Examination at the Womb-Door the one who is taking the exam seems to be a Crow
(L21) which passes see line 21 the exam. This animal the crow has been considered by
some critics as a symbol of mankind, which has many characteristics in common with Man
(Skea) in Ted Hughes poetry. So Hughes considers men stronger than Death evidently (L20).
In this case, in Plaths poem The Dead we find the image of the immortal men represented in
the spiritual Caesars (L5) which are none of the dead.
So both poets deal with the consciousness of humanity and immortality in their poems and they
do it so in different ways; Ted Hughes believes in the superman who is stronger than Death
whereas Sylvia Plath states that these bone shanks will not wake immaculate to trumpettoppling dawn of doomstruck day (lines 10&11). They lay forever in colossal sleep (L12).
Both poets talk about immortality; Ted Hughes affirms that the Crow (L21) is stronger than
Death whereas Sylvia Plath assumes tht nothing can cry them the dead up (L13) from
their fond, final, infamous decay (L14).
Neither Ted Hughes nor Sylvia Plath uses the first person. They both talk about a third
person singular in Teds poem owns (line 1 to line 6; lines 13 & 14) and is (lines 15, 16
&19); and plural in Sylvias poem they (lines 6, 7, 8 &12), them (L13) and their (L14).
Ted Hughes uses strong, heavy hearing adjectives to describe Death, such as scrawny
(L1), bristly scorched (L2), unspeakable (L5) or messy (L7) while, on the other hand,
Sylvia Plath puts some soft, kinder hearing nouns and adjectives to describe the dead men

(L3) in holy robes (L2), render love (L3), lulled (L4), paternal (L6), goodly loam
(L9), cradled (L9), immaculate (L10), loll (L12) and angels (L13).
There is only a moment in Ted Hughes poem where the first person appears. It is in line 20
with Me, evidently. The presence of this pronoun associated to what is said by the crow a
male symbol allows the reader to think that the writer of the text is likely to be a man.
However, in Plaths poem, the absence of pronouns such as we, our or us joined to the use
of adjectives related to childhood such as lulled (L4), cradled (L9) or immaculate (L10)
may allow us to think the poet could be a woman.
Finally, none of the poems has a rhyme scheme; both are free verses. Moreover, only Sylvia
Plath uses the external structure of the sonnet to create her poem whereas Ted Hughes uses a
complete free-dialogic structure.
Crow
Neil Roberts (Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield and
Special Professor of D.H. Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham) introduces Ted
Hughes's 'masterpiece'.
Crow holds a uniquely important place in Hughes oeuvre. It heralds the ambitious second
phase of his work, lasting roughly from the late sixties to the late seventies, when he turned
from direct engagement with the natural world to unified mythical narratives and sequences. It
was his most controversial work: a stylistic experiment which abandoned many of the attractive
features of his earlier work, and an ideological challenge to both Christianity and humanism.
Hughes wrote Crow, mostly between 1966 and 1969, after a barren period following the death
of Sylvia Plath. He looked back on the years of work on Crow as a time of imaginative
freedom and creative energy, which he felt that he never subsequently recovered. He
describedCrow as his masterpiece (Hughes, BL 10200). This creative period was brought to an
end by another tragedy: the deaths of Assia Wevill and her daughter Shura in March 1969.
While he was working on Crow Hughess conception of the project was much larger than the
eventually published book. He was trying to write what he called an epic folk-tale, a prose
narrative with interspersed verses. When, after the deaths of Assia and Shura, he was unable to
complete the project, he published a selection of the poems with the title Crow: From the Life
and Songs of the Crow in 1970. This was the book that was received as Crow by its first
readers, and that was more hotly debated than any other book of Hughess till Birthday
Letters. But over the years it became clear that Crow was not a clearly-defined text like
Hughess other books. In 1972 it was reprinted with seven additional poems. The following
year a limited edition was published with three more poems. As late as 1997 he recorded a
version that included several poems that had been published in other collections, and omitted
several that had been published in Crow.
This recording includes brief narrative links. Whenever he gave a public reading
fromCrow Hughes would provide a narrative context, and several times he expressed a desire
to complete the work as originally conceived. However, the narrative context that Hughes made

public is itself fragmentary and mostly desultory. There are only two fully developed episodes.
One, which Hughes titled in draft The Quarrel in Heaven, is the beginning of the story. After
completing his Creation God had a nightmare in the form of a Hand and a Voice. The
nightmare mocks His Creation, especially Gods masterpiece Man. At the same time, an
emissary comes from the world begging God to take life back, because it is unbearable. Gods
response is to challenge the nightmare to do better, and the consequence is that the nightmare
creates Crow, who becomes Gods companion, often trying unsuccessfully to improve on His
Creation.
Hughes describes Crow as wandering around the universe in search of his female Creator. In
the second developed episode he meets a hag by a river. He has to carry the hag across the river
while trying to answer questions that she puts to him, mostly about love. Hughes describes
several of the poems, particularly Lovesong, The Lovepet and Bride and Groom Lie
Hidden for Three Days (part of Cave Birds but included in Hughess recording of Crow) as
Crows attempts to answer these questions. When he reaches the other side of the river the hag
turns into a beautiful girl.
For some critics, notably Keith Sagar, Crow is the abortion of a great work, and has been
misinterpreted, mainly because, as the first edition stated, The Life and Songs of the
Crow covers only the first two thirds of Crows journey, bringing him to his lowest point,
whereas the narrative had been designed to conclude with Crows triumphant marriage to his
Creator (Sagar, Laughter, xii). However, it is arguable that the published book owes much of its
success to its unfinished, undecidable and provocative character.
The jacket of early editions of Crow was illustrated by a striking drawing by Hughess friend,
the American artist Leonard Baskin. Seeing Baskins drawings of crows had inspired Hughes to
embark on the sequence but, in contrast to later books such as Cave Birds and Under the North
Star, Baskin was not involved in the development of the project. The most important influence
on Crow is Trickster mythology. Paul Radin says of the Trickster, he became and remained
everything to every mangod, animal, human being, hero, buffoon, he who was before good
and evil, denier, affirmer, destroyer and creator (Radin, The Trickster, 169). This captures
perfectly Crows own ambivalent identity. You can see his Trickster character in a poem such
as A Childish Prank, where he remedies Gods failure to animate man and woman by biting
the Worm in two:
He stuffed into man the tail half
With the wounded end hanging out
He stuffed the had half headfirst into woman
And it crept in deeper and up
To peer out through her eyes
Is Crows invention of sexuality clever and resourceful, or crass and foolish? The shock that
poems like this caused when first published was intensified by the style, epitomised by phrases

like stuffed into man the tail half, which Hughes at the time described as a super-simple,
super-ugly language (Faas, Universe, 208). He seemed to be assaulting religion and poetry
simultaneously. By adopting this narrative style Hughes implicitly identifies himself with his
protagonist.
At the core of Crow is a group of poems, including this one, which re-accent the story of the
Creation, the Fall (Apple Tragedy), the Crucifixion (Crow Blacker than Ever). But the book
is not merely an attack on Christianity. The figure and style of Crow gave Hughes a means of
ranging widely across Western civilisation within a loosely unified sequence. He placed
himself explicitly in a tradition of primitive literature (Hughes, Letters, 296) especially through
his use of Trickster mythology, but also by drawing of a wide range of folktales and oral
devices such as repetition. But Crow is not merely a primitive pastiche: like much of the
greatest modernist art, primitive motifs are combined with a vivid contemporaneity, often to
powerful emotional effect:
And mouths cried Mamma
From sudden traps of calculus,
Theorems wrenched men in two,
Shock-severed eyes watched blood
Squandering as if from a drainpipe (Crows Account of the Battle)
The other influence that Hughes acknowledged was that of contemporary Eastern European
poetry, such as that of Miroslav Holub, Zbigniew Herbert, Janos Pilinszky and above all Vasko
Popa, and its witness of the atrocities that defined much of the twentieth century. In Hughess
own words these poets managed to grow up to a view of the unaccommodated universe with
all their sympathies intact and the simple animal courage of accepting the odds
(Hughes, Winter Pollen, 222). In measuring himself by writers such as these he made his most
important claim to be considered not merely a national but a European and even world poet.
Neil Roberts is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield and
Special Professor of D.H. Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham. He is the author
of Ted Hughes: A Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and co-author of Ted Hughes: A
Critical Study (Faber, 1981). He has recently completed a biography of Peter Redgrove, to be
published by Cape in January 2012.
The poem, Theology(Wodwo p.l49), introduces into Hughes published poetry his own
interpretation of the Biblical God. This imperfect, fatherly figure, however, had appeared
already in How the Whale Became and other Stories22, a book of childrens fables somewhat
similar to Kiplings Just So Stories23. There, Hughes depicted God as a friendly character who
manufactured the creatures of the earth out of clay which was then baked in the ovens of the
sun (How the Tortoise Became, HWB p.53). Yet this God is not responsible for all creation.
The whale, for example, grows quite of its own accord in Gods little back garden (How the
Whale became, HWB p.23). Also, unknown to God, a demon with creative powers of its own

lives in the middle of the earth where it manufactures the bee and tricks God into breathing life
into it (How the Bee became, HWB p.60). From these childrens stories, came the God of the
poem Logos in Wodwo24, who is also the fallible, almost human God of the Crow poems
which Hughes had begun writing in 1966.
In Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, Hughes, for the first time, wrote a sequence of
poems within a framework which took the form of a folk-mythology of his own construction.
Through the quasi-human figure of Crow, he continued his own journey of exploration into the
human psyche and, at the same time, his handling of the death/rebirth theme in his poetry
began to be more complex. It took on the aspect of a quest, a Shamanic journey to the
underworld, which Hughes believed to be the basic theme in many folktales, myths and
narrative poems25.
The poems included in Crow are part of a large number of poems which make up a vast folk
epic26 which tells the story of Crow. Hughes began this story at the suggestion of American
artist, Leonard Baskin, who wanted an accompanying text for some of his anthropomorphic
bird engravings. Amazingly, Hughes once said that he began Crow as childrens story27: but
the eventual development of Crows character, the sardonic, sometimes gruesome humour of
the poems, and Hughes sophisticated and heretical manipulation of Biblical stories, has made
Crow very much a bird for adults. Speaking on the BBC before the publication of Crow
Hughes explained something of the Crow story and the nature of Crow:
Nobody knows quite how he was created or how he appeared.
He was created by Gods nightmare. What exactly that is I
tried to define through the length of the poem, or the
succession of poems28.
More details of the Crow story were given by Hughes at his poetry reading at the Adelaide
Festival in 197629:
God is having a nightmare. This hand/voice this thing arrives at the moment he falls asleep and grabs him round
the throat, rushes him through the Universe, pushes him
beyond the stars and ploughs up the earth with his face
and throws him back into heaven. The moment he dozes off
this hand arrives and it all happens again, and he cant
understand what there can be in his creation which is so
hostile Eventually this voice/hand speaks.
An argument develops between God and his Nightmare about the adequacy of Man as a

creation. God is very defensive of Man. Man is a very good and successful invention and
given the materials and situation hes quite adequate. But whilst God is arguing with his
nightmare, Man has
sent up a representative to the gates of Heaven to ask
God to take life back because men are fed up with it. So
God is enraged that man has let him down so he
challenges the voice to do better: given the materials and
the whole set-up, to produce something better than Man.
The Nightmare plunges back to ferment and gestate in matter and a little embryo begins.
That is how Crow was created. As a creation which is better than Man, Crow is a failure, for
Hughes also said that maybe [Crows] ambition is to become a man. However, Hughes made
it clear that the actual Crow story is not really relevant to the poems as they stand: I think
they have a life a little aside from it. The story brought me to the poems (it) was a sort of
machine that assembled them.30 He went on to say:
The first idea of Crow was really an idea of style. In
folktales the prince going on the adventure comes to the
stable full of beautiful horses and he needs a horse for the
next stage and the Kings daughter advises him to take
none of the beautiful horses that hell be offered but to
choose the dirty, scabby little foal. You see, I throw out
the eagles and choose Crow. The idea was originally just
to write his songs, the songs that a Crow would sing. In
other words songs with no music whatsoever, in a super
simple and a super ugly language which would in a way shed
everything except just what he wanted to say without any
other consideration and thats the basis of the style of
the whole thing.
This allegory of the folktale prince and his choice of horse is an interesting one, for it shows
Hughes deliberately adopting the wretched, black, horrible, little nothing31 (which is Crow
as God sees him when he first appears), as his vehicle and mask for his new poetic journey.

Crow comes complete with all the mythological and folk-loric accretions which crows have
gathered through their long existence, and, of course, all the natural characteristics of the crow
species. Some of these attributes Hughes adverted to in his BBC talk when he said:
The Crow is the most intelligent of birds. He lives in
just about every piece of land on earth and theres a
great body of folk lore about crows, of course. No carrion
will kill a crow. The crow is the indestructible bird who
suffers everything, suffers nothing 32.
In a letter to A1an Bold33, he also wrote:
Crow is the bird of Bran, is the oldest and highest totem
creature of Britain England pretends to a lion but
that is a late fake import. Englands autochthonous Totem
is the Crow. Whatever the colour of Englishman you scratch
you come to some sort of crow.
Hughes, therefore, makes it clear that Crow has many characteristics in common with Man.
Also, given the cheeky, interfering, amoral, destructive and sometimes constructive personality
which emerges through the medium of Crows life and songs, plus Hughes own predilection
for mythological archetypes, the comparison of Crow with the Trickster figure common in
many mythologies is natural34.
Paul Radin, an authority on the Trickster Cycles of the North American Indians, describes
Trickster as being:
at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver
and negator, he who dupes others and is always duped
himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is
constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which
he has no control. He knows neither good or evil yet he is
responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or
social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet
through his actions all values come into being

Laughter, humour and irony permeate everything Trickster

does he is primarily an inchoate being of undetermined
proportions, a figure foreshadowing the shape of man35.
Here is the counterpart of Hughes Crow, who, laughing, singing and eating, displays his
supreme egotism by Flying the black flag of himself (Crow Blacker than Ever, C p.69)
through the havoc and horror which he has helped to create.
Trickster has never been restricted to one society. In European countries he appears in the guise
of Jester or Fool, and his roots in the human psyche are deep. Alan Garner has collected
Trickster stories from many countries in his book The Guizer and he writes:
If we take the elements from which our emotions are built
and give them separate names such as Mother, Hero, Father,
King, Child, Queen, the element that I think marks most of
us is that of the Fool. It is where our humanity lies. For
the Fool is the advocate of uncertainty: he is at once
creator and destroyer, bringer of help and harm. He draws
a boundary for chaos, so that we can make sense of the
rest. He is the shadow that shapes the light. Psychology
calls him Trickster. I have called him Guizer.
Guizer is the proper word for an actor in a mumming play.
He is comical, grotesque, stupid, cunning, ambiguous. He
is sometimes part animal, and always part something else.
The something else is what is so special. He is the
dawning godhead in Man36.
In these quotations from Radin and Garner we can see the characteristics of Hughes Crow and
his connection with Man, but the psychological implications of Crows character are broader
still. Radin writes that the Trickster cycle represents our efforts to deal with the problem of
growing up: that it is a speculum mentis wherein is depicted mans struggle with himself and
with a world into which he had been thrust without his volition and consent an attempt by
man to solve his problems inward and outward37.
On a similar psychological level, C. J. Jungs commentary on Radins collection of Trickster
Cycles equates the trickster figure with all the inferior traits of character in individuals, and

he accounts for its persistence in mans stories by the explanation that since the individual
shadow is never absent as a Component of personality, the collective figure can construct itself
out of it continually38. Crow, it appears was in many ways just such a self constructing figure,
because Hughes has said that the poems:
were usually something of a shock to write. Mostly they
wrote themselves quite rapidly and several of them
that seem quite ordinary now arrived with a sense of
having done something tabu39.
By adopting and developing this trickster figure Hughes was, therefore, extending his
exploration into his own mind and (if Jung is correct in his interpretation of Trickster)into the
human mind in general. In so doing, Hughes extended the death/rebirth theme of his poetry to
include the idea of spiritual growth and rebirth for Man, which is a most important part of the
Trickster Cycle. This pattern has been traced in detail in the Crow poems by Sagar40 and
Hirschberg41.
In Crow, Hughes not only redefined God, he adopted Biblical language and style, recreated the
Biblical Genesis story, perverted the message of the supreme power of Gods love and cast
Crow in the role of crucified and reborn hero(Crow and the Sea, C p.82) and survivor of the
Apocalypse. Crow was subjected to teaching and to tests, he was meant to learn humanity and
wholeness, to develop a soul, but only in poems published in a later poetic sequence (Cave
Birds) did he achieve real progress on his quest. As Sagar noted, Crow is Everyman who will
not acknowledge that everything he most hates and fears The Black Beast is within him42.
Crows interference in Gods work begins with A Childish Prank(C p.l9). God, Hughes
explained in his story43, is at first rather indulgent towards Crow. He tends to show it the
beauties and let it look on while he shows the marvels of the beginning. Having made Adam
and Eve, however, God has problems getting their souls into their bodies. The problem was so
great, it dragged him asleep. Crow intervenes, and in so doing invents sex as an urge which
man and woman cannot control or understand. Meanwhile:
God went on sleeping
Crow went on laughing
The Trickster element in Crows behaviour is obvious, but Hughes, too, is breaking tabus.
God tries to teach Crow human skills and human emotions - tries to change his amoral, selfish
nature. In Crows First Lesson(C p.20), God attempts to teach Crow how to talk, but his
efforts to teach him the word Love result only in the creation of horror. Crow gapes, and
vomits up his own devouring versions of love the white shark; a bluefly, a tsetse, a
mosquito; and mans bodiless head with womans vulva dropped over it and tightening around
his neck. God, defeated, goes back to sleeping, leaving Crow to his own devices and Crow
takes advantage of Gods slumber by inventing his own communion. This is a devastating

parody of the Christian rite, in which Crow literally partakes of Gods body (Crow
Communes, C p.30). Nor is this all. Crow next invents his own Theology (Crows Theology,
C p.35) which includes a God who is
much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.
This sacrilegious reconstruction of Biblical lore, which is responsible for the stunning impact
of some of the poems, is a clear indication of the way in which Crow resembles the Trickster
Cycles, for Trickster is traditionally a breaker of taboos and destroyer of the holy-ofholies44. It also illustrates the extent to which Hughes has adopted the Crow mask in these
poems, and how he takes on himself the role of Trickster. In Crow, Hughes is doing just what
Jung describes when he says that there is something of the Trickster in the character of the
shaman and medicine-man, for he, too, often plays malicious jokes on people45
Crow may well seem to some like a malicious joke, and those critics who were convinced that
Hughes enjoyed wallowing in violence and the eager pursuit of blood and thunder46
certainly felt vindicated when Crow was published. Crow, however, is a very modern version
of the Trickster Cycle fitting well with the surrealist and absurd sentiments of other twentieth
century writers such as Kafka; of artists such as Francis Bacon; and of some of the Eastern
European Poets whose works Hughes has helped to make available in translation. In it he
succeeds, as Calvin Bedient commented, in joining the twin nihilistic themes of the century
the Id and the Void with witty and enormous invention47.
Hughes himself, however, seemed to feel that the Trickster Cycle had, in a way, taken him too
far, too fast. He described the writing of the Crow poems to Faas as being like putting
[himself] through a process, and when asked by Faas if he felt the process had come to a kind
of completion, he said:
In a way I think I projected too far into the future. Id
like to get the rest of it. But maybe it will take a
different form.48
Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow ends with Hughes invocation to the
creative/destructive energies of Nature which brought him Crow: Sit on my finger, sing in my
ear, O littleblood. Subsequently, he returned to the theme of the quest and of spiritual rebirth
in Cave Birds and Gaudete, where he examined it again in two forms which are as different
from each other as they are from Crow.
The Thought Fox
THE THOUGHT-FOX HAS often been acknowledged as one of the most completely realised
and artistically satisfying of the poems in Ted Hughess first collection, The Hawk in the

Rain. At the same time it is one of the most frequently anthologised of all Hughess poems. In
this essay I have set out to use what might be regarded as a very ordinary analysis of this
familiar poem in order to focus attention on an aspect of Hughess poetry which is sometimes
neglected. My particular interest is in the underlying puritanism of Hughess poetic vision and
in the conflict between violence and tenderness which seems to be directly engendered by this
puritanism.
The thought-fox is a poem about writing a poem. Its external action takes place in a room late
at night where the poet is sitting alone at his desk. Outside the night is starless, silent, and
totally black. But the poet senses a presence which disturbs him:
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness.
The disturbance is not in the external darkness of the night, for the night is itself a metaphor for
the deeper and more intimate darkness of the poets imagination in whose depths an idea is
mysteriously stirring. At first the idea has no clear outlines; it is not seen but felt frail and
intensely vulnerable. The poets task is to coax it out of formlessness and into fuller
consciousness by the sensitivity of his language. The remote stirrings of the poem are
compared to the stirrings of an animal a fox, whose body is invisible, but which feels its way
forward nervously through the dark undergrowth:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A foxs nose touches twig, leaf;
The half-hidden image which is contained within these lines is of soft snow brushing against
the trees as it falls in dark flakes to the ground. The idea of the delicate dark snow evokes the
physical reality of the foxs nose which is itself cold, dark and damp, twitching moistly and
gently against twig and leaf. In this way the first feature of the fox is mysteriously defined and
its wet black nose is nervously alive in the darkness, feeling its way towards us. But by
inverting the natural order of the simile, and withholding the subject of the sentence, the poet
succeeds in blurring its distinctness so that the fox emerges only slowly out of the formlessness
of the snow. Gradually the foxs eyes appear out of the same formlessness, leading the shadowy
movement of its body as it comes closer:
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow

Between trees, and warily a lame

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow. ..
In the first two lines of this passage the rhythm of the verse is broken by the punctuation and
the line-endings, while at the same time what seemed the predictable course of the rhymescheme is deliberately departed from. Both rhythmically and phonetically the verse thus mimes
the nervous, unpredictable movement of the fox as it delicately steps forward, then stops
suddenly to check the terrain before it runs on only to stop again. The tracks which the fox
leaves in the snow are themselves duplicated by the sounds and rhythm of the line Sets neat
prints into the snow. The first three short words of this line are internal half-rhymes, as neat, as
identical and as sharply outlined as the foxs paw-marks, and these words press down gently
but distinctly into the soft open vowel of snow. The foxs body remains indistinct, a silhouette
against the snow. But the phrase lame shadow itself evokes a more precise image of the fox,
as it freezes alertly in its tracks, holding one front-paw in mid-air, and then moves off again
like a limping animal. At the end of the stanza the words bold to come are left suspended as
though the fox is pausing at the outer edge of some trees. The gap between the stanzas is itself
the clearing which the fox, after hesitating warily, suddenly shoots across: Of a body that is
bold to come / Across clearings. ..
At this point in the poem the hesitant rhythm of that single sentence which is prolonged over
five stanzas breaks into a final and deliberate run. The fox has scented safety. After its dash
across the clearing of the stanza-break, it has come suddenly closer, bearing down upon the
poet and upon the reader:
an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business. ..
It is so close now that its two eyes have merged into a single green glare which grows wider
and wider as the fox comes nearer, its eyes heading directly towards ours: Till, with a sudden
sharp hot stink of fox / It enters the dark hole of the head. If we follow the visual logic of the
poem we are compelled to imagine the fox actually jumping through the eyes of the poet with
whom the reader of the poem is inevitably drawn into identification. The fox enters the lair of
the head as it would enter its own lair, bringing with it the hot, sensual, animal reek of its body
and all the excitement and power of the achieved vision.
The fox is no longer a formless stirring somewhere in the dark depths of the bodily
imagination; it has been coaxed out of the darkness and into full consciousness. It is no longer
nervous and vulnerable, but at home in the lair of the head, safe from extinction, perfectly

created, its being caught for ever on the page. And all this has been done purely by the
imagination. For in reality there is no fox at all, and outside, in the external darkness, nothing
has changed: The window is starless still; the clock ticks, / The page is printed. The fox is the
poem, and the poem is the fox. And I suppose, Ted Hughes has written, that long after I am
gone, as long as a copy of the poem exists, every time anyone reads it the fox will get up
somewhere out of the darkness and come walking towards them.[1]
After discussing The thought-fox in his book The Art of Ted Hughes,Keith Sagar writes:
Suddenly, out of the unknown, there it is, with all the characteristics of a living thing a
sudden sharp hot stink of fox. A simple trick like pulling a kicking rabbit from a hat, but only
a true poet can do it.[2] In this particular instance it seems to me that the simile Sagar uses
betrays him into an inappropriate critical response His comparison may be apt in one respect,
for it is certainly true that there is a powerful element of magic in the poem. But this magic has
little to do with party-conjurors who pull rabbits out of top-hats. It is more like the sublime and
awesome magic which is contained in the myth of creation, where God creates living beings
out of nothingness by the mere fiat of his imagination.
The very sublimity and God-like nature of Hughess vision can engender uneasiness. For
Hughess fox has none of the freedom of an animal. It cannot get up from the page and walk off
to nuzzle its young cubs or do foxy things behind the poets back. It cannot even die in its own
mortal, animal way. For it is the poets creature, wholly owned and possessed by him,
fashioned almost egotistically in order to proclaim not its own reality but that of its
imaginatively omnipotent creator. (I originally wrote these words before coming across
Hughess own discussion of the poem in Poetry in the Making: So, you see, in some ways my
fox is better than an ordinary fox. It will live for ever, it will never suffer from hunger or
hounds. I have it with me wherever I go. And I made it. And all through imagining it clearly
enough and finding the living words (p. 21).)
This feeling of uneasiness is heightened by the last stanza of the poem. For although this stanza
clearly communicates the excitement of poetic creation, it seems at the same time to express an
almost predatory thrill; it is as though the fox has successfully been lured into a hunters trap.
The bleak matter-of-factness of the final line The page is printed only reinforces the
curious deadness of the thought-fox. If, at the end of the poem, there is one sense in which the
fox is vividly and immediately alive, it is only because it has been pinned so artfully upon the
page. The very accuracy of the evocation of the fox seems at times almost fussily obsessive.
The studied and beautifully final nature of the poem indicates that we are not in the presence
of any untrained spontaneity, any primitive or naive vision. It might be suggested that the
sensibility behind Hughess poem is more that of an intellectual an intellectual who, in
rebellion against his own ascetic rationalism, feels himself driven to hunt down and capture an
element of his own sensual and intuitive identity which he does not securely possess.
In this respect Hughess vision is perhaps most nearly akin to that of D. H. Lawrence, who was
also an intellectual in rebellion against his own rationalism, a puritan who never ceased to
quarrel with his own puritanism. But Lawrences animal poems, as some critics have observed,
are very different from those of Hughes. Lawrence has a much greater respect for the integrity
and independence of the animals he writes about. In Snake he expresses remorse for the

rationalistic, educated violence which he inflicts on the animal. And at the end of the poem he
is able, as it were, retrospectively to allow his dark sexual, sensual, animal alter ego to crawl
off into the bowels of the earth, there to reign alone and supreme in a kingdom where Lawrence
recognises he can have no part. Hughes, in The thought-fox at least, cannot do this. It would
seem that, possessing his own sensual identity even less securely than Lawrence, he needs the
sudden sharp hot stink of fox to pump up the attenuated sense he has of the reality of his own
body and his own feelings. And so he pins the fox upon the page with the cruel purity of artistic
form and locates its lair inside his own head. And the fox lives triumphantly as an idea as a
part of the poets own identity but dies as a fox.
If there is a difference between The thought-fox and the animal poems of Lawrence there is
also, of course, a difference between Hughess poetic vision and that kind of extreme scientific
rationalism which both Lawrence and Hughes attack throughout their work. For in the mind of
the orthodox rationalist the fox is dead even as an idea. So it is doubly dead and the orthodox
rationalist, who is always a secret puritan, is more than happy about this. For he doesnt want
the hot sensual reek of fox clinging to his pure rational spirit, reminding him that he once
possessed such an obscene thing as a body.
This difference may appear absolute. But it seems to me that it would be wrong to regard it as
such, and that there is a much closer relationship between the sensibility which is expressed in
Hughess poem and the sensibility of puritanical rationalism than would generally be
acknowledged. The orthodox rationalist, it might be said, inflicts the violence of reason on
animal sensuality in an obsessive attempt to eliminate it entirely. Hughes in The thought-fox
unconsciously inflicts the violence of an art upon animal sensuality in a passionate but conflictridden attempt to incorporate it into his own rationalist identity.
The conflict of sensibility which Hughes unconsciously dramatises in The thought-fox runs
through all his poetry. On the one hand there is in his work an extraordinary sensuous and
sensual generosity which coexists with a sense of abundance and a capacity for expressing
tenderness which are unusual in contemporary poetry .These qualities are particularly in
evidence in some of the most mysteriously powerful of all his poems poems such as Crows
undersong, Littleblood, Full moon and little Frieda and Bride and groom lie hidden for
three days .On the other hand his poetry and above all his poetry in Crow is notorious for
the raging intensity of its violence, a violence which, by some critics at least, has been seen as
destructive of all artistic and human values. Hughes himself seems consistently to see his own
poetic sensitivity as feminine and his poetry frequently gives the impression that he can allow
himself to indulge this sensitivity only within a protective shell of hard, steely masculine
violence.
In The thought-fox itself this conflict of sensibility appears in such an attenuated or
suppressed form that it is by no means the most striking feature of the poem. But, as I have
tried to show, the conflict may still be discerned. It is present above all in the tension between
the extraordinary sensuous delicacy of the image which Hughes uses to describe the foxs nose
and the predatory, impulse which seems to underlie the poem an impulse to which Hughes
has himself drawn attention by repeatedly comparing the act of poetic creation to the process of

capturing or killing small animals.[3] Indeed it might be suggested that the last stanza of the
poem records what is, in effect, a ritual of tough manly posturing. For in it the poet might be
seen as playing a kind of imaginative game in which he attempts to outstare the fox looking
straight into its eyes as it comes closer and closer and refusing to move, refusing to flinch,
refusing to show any sign of feminine weakness. The fox itself does not flinch or deviate from
its course. It is almost as though, in doing this, it has successfully come through an initiationritual to which the poet has unconsciously submitted it; the fox which is initially nervous,
circumspect, and as soft and delicate as the dark snow, has proved that it is not feminine after
all but tough, manly and steely willed brilliantly, concentratedly, coming about its own
business. It is on these conditions alone, perhaps, that its sensuality can be accepted by the
poet without anxiety.
Whether or not the last tentative part of my analysis is accepted, it will perhaps be allowed that
the underlying pattern of the poem is one of sensitivity-within- toughness; it is one in which a
sensuality or sensuousness which might sometimes be characterised as feminine can be
incorporated into the identity only to the extent that it has been purified by, or subordinated to,
a tough, rational, artistic will.
The same conflict of sensibility which is unconsciously dramatised in The thought-fox also
appears, in an implicit form, in one of the finest and most powerful poems
in Lupercal, Snowdrop:
Now is the globe shrunk tight
Round the mouses dulled wintering heart.
Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass,
Move through an outer darkness Not in their right minds,
With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends,
Brutal as the stars of this month,
Her pale head heavy as metal.
The poem begins by evoking, from the still and tiny perspective of the hibernating mouse, a
vast intimacy with the tightening body of the earth. But the numbness of wintering heart
undermines the emotional security which might be conveyed by the initial image. The next
lines introduce a harsh predatory derangement into nature through which two conventionally
threatening animals, the weasel and the crow, move as if moulded in brass .It is only at this
point, after a sense of petrified and frozen vitality has been established, that the snowdrop is, as
it were, noticed by the poem. What might be described as a conventional and sentimental
personification of the snowdrop is actually intensified by the fact that she can be identified
only from the title. This lends to the pronoun a mysterious power through which the poem
gestures towards an affirmation of feminine frailty and its ability to survive even the cruel
rigour of winter. But before this gesture can even be completed it is overlaid by an evocation of
violent striving:

She, too, pursues her ends,

Brutal as the stars of this month,
Her pale head heavy as metal.
The last line is finely balanced between the fragility of pale and the steeliness of metal a
word whose sound softens and moderates its sense .The line serves to evoke a precise visual
image of the snowdrop, the relative heaviness of whose flower cannot be entirely supported by
its frail stem. But at the same time the phrase her pale head minimally continues the
personification which is first established by the pronoun she. In this way the feminine
snowdrop a little incarnation, almost, of the White Goddess is located within that world of
frozen and sleeping vitality which is created by the poem, a vitality which can only be
preserved, it would seem, if it is encased within a hard, metallic, evolutionary will.
The beauty of this poem resides precisely in the way that a complex emotional ambivalence is
reflected through language. But if we can withdraw ourselves from the influence of the spell
which the poem undoubtedly casts, the vision of the snowdrop cannot but seem an alien one.
What seems strange about the poem is the lack of any recognition that the snowdrop survives
not because of any hidden reserves of massive evolutionary strength or will, but precisely
because of its frailty its evolutionary vitality is owed directly to the very delicacy, softness
and flexibility of its structure. In Hughess poem the purposeless and consciousless snowdrop
comes very near to being a little Schopenhauer philosophising in the rose-garden, a little Stalin
striving to disguise an unmanly and maidenly blush behind a hard coat of assumed steel. We
might well be reminded of Hughess own account of the intentions which lay behind his poem
Hawk roosting. Actually what I had in mind, Hughes has said, was that in this hawk Nature
is thinking I intended some creator like the Jehovah in Job but more feminine. But, as
Hughes himself is obliged to confess, He doesnt sound like Isis, mother of the gods, which he
is. He sounds like Hitlers familiar spirit. In an attempt to account for the gap between
intention and performance Hughes invokes cultural history: When Christianity kicked the
devil out of Job what they actually kicked out was Nature. ..and nature became the
devil.[4] This piece of rationalisation, however, seems all too like an attempt to externalise a
conflict of sensibility which is profoundly internal. The conflict in question is the same as that
which may be divined both in The thought-fox and in Snowdrop , in which a frail
sensuousness which might be characterised as , feminine can be accepted only after it has
been subordinated to a tough and rational will.
The conflict between violence and tenderness which is present in an oblique form throughout
Hughes early poetry is one that is in no sense healed or resolved in his later work. Indeed it
might be suggested that much of the poetic and emotional charge of this later work comes
directly from an intensification of this conflict and an increasingly explicit polarisation of its
terms. The repressed tenderness of Snowdrop or the tough steely sensibility which is
expressed in Thrushes, with its idealisation of the bullet and automatic / Purpose of
instinctual life, is seemingly very different to the all but unprotected sensuous delicacy of
Littleblood, the poem with which Hughes endsCrow:
O littleblood, little boneless little skinless

Ploughing with a linnets carcase

Reaping the wind and threshing the stones.
....
Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.
But this poem must ultimately be located within the larger context which is provided by
the Crow poems. This context is one of a massive unleashing of sadistic violence -a violence
which is never endorsed by Hughes but which, nevertheless, seems to provide a kind of
necessary psychological armour within which alone tenderness can be liberated without
anxiety.
In pointing to the role which is played by a particular conflict of sensibility in Hughess poetry
I am not in any way seeking to undermine the case which can and should be made for what
would conventionally be called Hughess poetic greatness. Indeed, my intention is almost the
reverse of this. For it seems to me that one of the factors which moderates or diminishes the
imaginative power of some of Hughess early poetry is precisely the way in which an acute
conflict which is central to his own poetic sensibility tends to be disguised or, suppressed.
In Crow, which I take to be Hughess most extraordinary poetic achievement to date, Hughes,
almost for the first time, assumes imaginative responsibility for the puritanical violence which
is present in his poetry from the very beginnings. In doing so he seems to take full possession
of his own poetic powers. It is as though a conflict which had, until that point, led a shadowy
and underworld existence, is suddenly cracked open in order to disgorge not only its own
violence but also all that imaginative wealth and vitality which had been half locked up within
it.
The most obvious precedent for such a violent eruption of imaginative powers is that which is
provided by Shakespeare, and perhaps above all by King Lear. Lear is a play of extraordinary
violence whose persistent image, as Caroline Spurgeon has observed, is that of a human body
in anguished movement, tugged, wrenched, beaten, pierced, stung, scourged, dislocated, flayed,
gashed, scalded, tortured, and finally broken on the rack.[5] But at the same time it is a play
about a man who struggles to repossess his own tenderness and emotional vitality and to weep
those tears which, at the beginning of the play, he contemptuously dismisses as soft, weak and
womanly. The same conflict reappears throughout Shakespeares poetry. We have only to recall
Lady Macbeths renunciation of her own soft maternal impulses in order to appreciate the
fluency of Shakespeares own imaginative access to this conflict and the disturbing cruelty of
its terms:
I have given suck, and know
How tender tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashd the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this. (I. vii)

The intense conflict between violence and tenderness which is expressed in these lines is, of
course, in no sense one which will be found only in the poetic vision of Hughes and
Shakespeare. It is present in poetry from the Old Testament onwards and indeed it might
reasonably be regarded as a universal conflict, within which are contained and expressed some
of the most fundamental characteristics of the human identity.
Any full investigation of the conflict and of its cultural significance would inevitably need to
take account both of what Mark Spilka has called Lawrences quarrel with tenderness and of
Ian Sutties discussion of the extent and rigour of the taboo on tenderness in our own culture.
[6] But such an investigation would also need to take into consideration a much larger cultural
context, and perhaps above all to examine the way in which the Christian ideal of love has
itself traditionally been expressed within the medium of violent apocalyptic fantasies.
The investigation which I describe is clearly beyond the scope of this essay. My more modest
aim here has been to draw attention to the role which is played by this conflict in two of the
most hauntingly powerful of Ted Hughess early poems and to suggest that Hughess poetic
powers are fully realised not when this conflict is resolved but when it is unleashed in its most
violent form.
In taking this approach I am motivated in part by the feeling that the discussion of Hughess
poetry has sometimes been too much in thrall to a powerful cultural image of Hughess poetic
personality one which he himself has tended to project. In this image Hughes is above all an
isolated and embattled figure who has set himself against the entire course both of modern
poetry and of modern history .He is rather like the hero in one of his most powerful poems
Stealing trout on a May morning, resolutely and stubbornly wading upstream, his feet rooted
in the primeval strength of the rivers bed as the whole course of modern history and modern
puritanical rationalism floods violently past him in the opposite direction, bearing with it what
Hughes himself has called mental disintegration under the super-ego of Moses and the
self-anaesthetising schizophrenia of St Paul, and leaving him in secure possession of that
ancient and archaic imaginative energy which he invokes in his poetry.

The alternative to this Romantic view of Hughess poetic personality is to see Hughess poetry
as essentially the poetry of an intellectual, an intellectual who is subject to the rigours of
puritanical rationalism just as much as any other intellectual but who, instead of submitting to
those rigours, fights against them with that stubborn and intransigent resolution which belongs
only to the puritan soul.
In reality perhaps neither of these views is wholly appropriate, and the truth comes somewhere
between the two. But what does seem clear is that when Hughes talks of modern civilisation as
consisting in mental disintegration. ..under the super-ego of Moses and the selfanaesthetising schizophrenia of St Paul he is once again engaging in that characteristic strategy

of externalising a conflict of sensibility which is profoundly internal. For it must be suggested

that Pauls own schizophrenia consisted in an acute conflict between the impulse towards
tenderness, abundance and generosity and the impulse towards puritanical violence the
violence of chastity. It is precisely this conflict which seems to be buried in Hughess early
poetry and which, as I have suggested, eventually erupts in the poetry of Crow. If,
in Crow, Hughes is able to explore and express the internalised violence of the rationalist
sensibility with more imaginative power than any other modern poet, it is perhaps because he
does so from within a poetic sensibility which is itself profoundly intellectual, and deeply
marked by that very puritanical rationalism which he so frequently and I believe justifiably
attacks.

Philip Larkin
Church Going
ANALYSIS: SPEAKER
The speaker in this poem is a guy who doesn't know all that much about churches and religion
or any of that kind of stuff. You can tell this from the way he clumsily enters the church doesn't
really seem to respect its sacredness of the church. He sees its holy objects inside as "some
brass and stuff" (5).
However, that's not all there is to this guy. He also hears a "tense, musty, unignorable silence"
in the church, which tells us that the speaker does feel some sense of tension or awe inside the
building. He knows he's supposed to do something to show respect, but since he's not wearing a
hat, he chooses to "take off/ [his] cycle clips in awkward reverence" (9). In other words, the
guy doesn't know much about church, but he's not just coming into the church to make fun of
it. He just isn't all that smooth when it comes to dealing with all this holy stuff.
In all, the speaker is someone who can't really get behind the whole religion thing, but he
definitely has a hunger for some sort of spirituality. And maybe that's the best way to describe
him: he's spiritual, but not religious. The speaker feels like church and faith might be declining
in the modern world, and he's curious about what will happen to the church when the last of the
believers are gone. While he doesn't come to any great conclusions, he figures
that something of the church's influence will remain. He just doesn't know what.
And you know what? He seems okay with that, really. As a whole, the speaker in this poem is
characterized by his tendency to ask questions. In fact, the poem is almost allquestions between
line 23 and 52. He doesn't seem to come up with many definitive answers, but that doesn't stop
him from asking in the first place.
ANALYSIS: SETTING
Where It All Goes Down
Throughout the poem, the speaker focuses very closely on his setting. The irony and wit of the

poem, however, comes from the fact that the speaker doesn't focus on any of the things he's
supposed to when he's inside the church. Instead, he wonders about practical concerns like
whether or not the roof's been cleaned or restored.
Overall, the speaker's reactions to the setting of this poem (the church) symbolize the major
theme of this poem, which is the gap between a person who's interested in religious faith and
the deeper mystical meaning that only full-blown believers are familiar with. Setting up this
relationship between the speaker and the setting shows us that the objects inside the church
don't have any inherent meaning, but just the meaning that we give to them. But it also shows
that the church does have a vague mystique that keeps the speaker coming back to check out
the insides of churches.
The speaker's meditations on what will happen to churches in the future conveys his sense of
curiosity, but also his desire to find something he can take seriously about human life. The
description of the church, for example, changing from a sacred place to a secular museum
where the "parchment, plate, and pyx [are in] locked cases" (25)shows a world that the
speaker would be more familiar with. Ultimately, Larkin uses the tension between the speaker's
ignorance of church symbolism, and his grasp on the physical church itself, as a staging ground
for the tension between religious faith and secular skepticism. Eventually the speaker lands
somewhere in the middle, in a place of questioning.
ANALYSIS: SOUND CHECK
All in all, the poem sounds conversational, as though the speaker is just talking to us. Larkin is
really good at making highly crafted language sound casual and almost spontaneous. He
doesn't leave many obvious traces of the months of work that he would've put into writing this
poem. He establishes this conversational sound from the very first line, having his speaker say,
"Once I am sure there's nothing going on" (1). It's a broad, vague ("nothing going on") kind of
way to conversationally introduce the poem. A later phrase in this same stanza has him talking
about "some brass and stuff/ Up at the holy end" (5-6). It's hard to believe that a line like this is
written in very strict iambic pentameter and is part of a larger stanza with a complex rhyme
scheme. In this way, Larkin seems to use the contrast of sound and form in this poem to suggest
that, even if we are casually non-religious in our daily lives, there might at times actually be a
higher "plan" to these lives. It can just be difficult to recognize unless we look closely.
ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH THE TITLE?
"Church Going" seems like a very simple and straightforward title, just as the poem itself
seems to be simple and straightforward. On the most literal level, it refers to the way that
regular "church goers" attend mass every week. For the speaker of this poem, though, church
going has a completely different set of meanings, because he's not connected to the official
teachings of Christianity. Church going for him refers to the way that he continues to return to
the church even though he can't find anything in it that's believable. This double meaning of
"church going" helps to highlight the tension this poem explores between traditional religious
meaning and the speaker's personal relationship to the church.

On another level, "Church Going" could refer to the fact that the speaker of this poem spends
much of his time wondering about what will happen to churches once people's belief in religion
has vanished from the Earth. In other words, the title also hints at the possibility that the church
might "go" away someday and never come back. And guess what? That's exactly what a huge
section of this poem is about. Pretty clever stuff, right?
Gotta Love that Larkin Tone
"Church Going" contains several features that have Philip Larkin written all over them. First,
there's his witty, ironic way of approaching a very serious subject. There's also his
conversational tone, which he uses in many poems and which gives us the sense that the
speaker of Larkin's poems is very often Larkin himself. Despite the ironic tone and casual
treatment of religion, Larkin shows a respectfulness in this poem that you might not get in
something like "High Windows" (another Larkin poemcheck it out). Also, Larkin's mixture
of everyday speech and tight poetic forms is also something for which he is widely known.
ANALYSIS: TOUGH-O-METER
(4) Base Camp
Getting at Larkin's deeper themes might take some digging, but on the level of language, there's
not much in this poem to make you scratch your head. When you consider that Larkin's poetry
was appearing shortly after the complicated work of modernists like T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound,
and that he wanted to write for more general audience, then you can totally appreciate just how
accessible his poetry is.
Exactly how steamy is this poem?
Larkin is definitely not above talking about sex inside a church, but he doesn't happen to do it
in "Church Going." There's not even so much as a sexy euphemism in this poem. Larkin's
concerns here are almost entirely faith-based, except for the odd occasion when he's concerned
with the condition of a church's roof. Nothing all that steamy.

RELIGION THEME
If you really wanted to, you could say that "Church Going" is about the tension between
religion and spirituality. Go ahead! Just say it. Religion here refers to the "official" answers that
spiritual faith gives to those big life questions like, "Why are we here?" In contrast,
"spirituality" tends more to ask questions. In this poem, you have a speaker who only has a
slight knowledge of religion, yet this knowledge has a huge impact on him because he often
wonders whether or not he's approaching spiritual questions in the "right way." Ultimately, it
doesn't look like he can get behind religion, but he (and the poem as a whole) definitely admits
to the appeal of religion, especially for people who want to find something in life that's worth
taking seriously.

SPIRITUALITY THEME
"Church Going" draws a pretty clear line between spirituality and religion. Spirituality is the
part of the speaker that keeps drawing him back into churches, even though he doesn't find
anything in organized religion. In this sense, spirituality refers to the basic human longing that
leads people toward religion. The poem describes this longing as a profound desire to be
serious and to have a serious meaning in your life. Otherwise, life is just a big joke. Not the
funny kind either. More like an old, dusty, knock-knock kind. For this reason, the speaker
implies, spirituality will always exist even if religion doesn't. Religion means knowing all of
the customs and rules of a specific faith, while spirituality, as the speaker shows us, can be
vague and "uninformed" (46). According to Larkin, religion provides hard answers to life's big
questions, while spirituality is what keeps us asking these questions. In this sense, you might
say that Larkin doesn't necessarily endorse religion, but he definitely finds something in the
idea of spirituality.
MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD THEME
While it might not be as big of a deal in "Church Going" as religion or spirituality, the
relationship between humanity and nature helps Larkin explore the conflict between the sense
of order that humanity tries to force onto the natural world, and the indifference that nature has
to this sort of effort. At several points in this poem, the natural world serves as a foil to religion,
since nature is a symbol of the inevitable decay that happens to everything that humans try to
impose, whether it's something physical like a church, or non-physical like Christian beliefs. It
may not seem like itheck, we may not even want to admit itbut humanity is a fleeting
thing, and so are its attempts to mold the world into its own image. Nature, on the other hand,
will keep on living long after we're dead. For this reason, the images of nature in this poem
often have almost a post-apocalyptic feel to them, reflecting a world in which humanity and
human forms of meaning are totally gone.
TIME THEME
Like nature, time comes up as a theme in "Church Going" mostly for the purpose of showing
how temporary humanity's time on earth actually is. In fact, Larkin's speaker suggests that
it's because our time is so limited that we have a longing for some higher purpose, or for some
sense that our lives will still be meaningful after we're gone. For this reason, we might believe
we have immortal souls that'll go to heaven. Or maybe we believe that our time on Earth is best
spent by treating others with compassion and kindness. In any case, the fact remains that all
human beings will one day die (deal with it, people), and the inevitable passing of time is
deeply connected to humanity's urge for spiritual significance.
Ambulance
Rather like Aubade, this poem is a portrait of Larkins fear and contemplation of death. Yet it
manages to cleverly encapsulate the entire human story within just five verses. From the
exchange of love in conception to a summary of a life filled with families and fashions, he
makes it perfectly clear that we will all end our days within a small, confined box, unreachable

inside a room and the traffic of ongoing life will part and let the dead move through, as if
flinching in denial of its inevitable consequence.
The poem tackles the human need to ignore death in a whisper at their own distress, as if by
offering sympathy, we can cheat death and push it away as someone elses problem. Larkin also
argues that all streets in time are visited, like in Aubade when Being brave . Lets no one
off the grave. He reiterates that we cannot avoid it, but like an ironic lottery, we all hope that
the ambulance will not come to our door, just yet.
In the second verse, Larkin describes the aroma and pace of life, the ongoing population, the
children strewn and the women going shopping as if nothing had happened, the smells of food
but then the sick person is stowed away, so as not to spoil the idyllic view of family life and
its fragrant perpetuity. His own questions on faith emerge again with, And sense the solving
emptiness . That lies just under all we do. In these words, we feel the hopelessness in our
meaningless existence that leads only to death. We feel dull in our own fragility, cut off by our
own denial and frightened by the inevitability of what is to come.
It is clear that Larkins ambulances are a one way ticket closed like confessionals and they tell
no secrets rather like the mystery of death, with its precarious religious overtones, where
nobody really knows whether there is eternal life or if it is simply something that dulls to
distance all we are. Whilst some may feel this is a gloomy and pessimistic poem, it can also be
viewed as an opportunity, not to fear but to seize the chance, make your mark on the world and
leave a legacy that can be remembered within the sea of forgotten faces.
As Philip Larkin grew older, he became more and more obsessed with the concept of death.
Larkin was largely considered to be an atheist; so for Larkin death didn't mean passing through
the pearly gates into heaven, instead death was an all-powerful entity that could take you at any
time to some unknown terrifying abyss. In Larkin's poem Ambulances, he uses an ambulance
to convey both the loneliness of age and death, and the fact that death comes to all, sooner or
later. Ambulances are generally vehicles that are associated with help and rescue, but in this
poem the ambulance is portrayed in an ominous light, in order to jar the reader's sense of
security. In this poem, the ambulance is in effect like the Grim Reaper, who comes to collect
souls and ferry's them into the afterlife.
Larkin's uses the confessional to demonstrate the difference a generation makes; the previous
generation would have gone to church to heal themselves, while the new generation with its
new health care system went to hospitals; thus, the ambulance becomes the modern day
confessional. Confessionals are enclosed stalls in a Roman Catholic Church in which priests
hear confessions. "Closed like confessionals" is a simile; the closed door of the confessional is
similar to the confined space of an ambulance when its doors are closed. Like a confessional,
an ambulance can be a very vulnerable place for its inhabitants; you bear your soul in a
confessional, and put your life/body in the hands of the paramedics. Ambulances thread-to
make one's way through or between-the noontime rush-hour; they will also most likely have
their siren on, which draws the stares of strangers. The ambulance doesn't stop to explain; it is
on a mission, to save a life. Some are startled by the siren and the presence of the ambulance,
while others are curious about what has happened. The appearance of the ambulance also tends

to frighten, because it means that someone out there, no one knows who, could be injured,
dying, or even dead. The color of the ambulance is a "light glossy grey," and it has a plaque
with the emergency services coat of arms on the side. It is fitting that the ambulance is painted
grey, because ambulances often serve as the grey area between life and death; some who enter
the ambulance alive leave it dead. The last two lines are particularly ominous; you never know
when it will be your turn to die, but rest assured that one day it will be your turn to die. Death is
inevitable and all-powerful.
Everyone stops what they are doing to look at the ambulance. Children stop playing and stand
strewn-scattered-on door steps and streets; women stop shopping; dinners are left on the stoves,
all so that they can watch as the ambulance's newest victim be taken away. The person being
put into the ambulance is void of any identity; he or she is simply described as having a "wild
white face." The whiteness could be referring to two things: first, the person has grey hair, and
from that we can infer that the person is older; and second, that all of the blood has gone from
the person's face due to fear or illness. Wild probably refers to the patient being scared or
having some psychosis, seizure, or other ailment that would require hospitalization. The person
is carried into the ambulance/confessional on a stretcher and secured into place for the long
journey to the hospital/afterlife.
The men, women, and children standing around watching this spectacle all sense for a moment
the solution for the emptiness that they all feel inside; the solution is death. Death lies under all
we do; the fear of dying drives us to live and take chances. For a second they feel whole with
the knowledge that death is permanent, blank, and true; death offers an end from all of their
fears, worries, and obligations, but dying also means not being able to experience happiness
and love anymore. Nothing is greater or more powerful than death; death is the ultimate truth.
"Poor soul" is italicized to emphasis the doom felt by the spectators and the inevitably of the
person's death; by referring to the person as a "soul" the narrator is telling us that that person
will be dying soon. The spectators whisper as a way to calm their nerves, and in an effort not to
attract death. They are sad for the person in the ambulance, but they are also happy that it
wasn't their time, yet.
The person in the ambulance is borne-carried-away to the hospital (or metaphorically to the
afterlife), in the deadened air. The "deadened air" has a twofold meaning: first, there is death in
the air, meaning someone is going to die soon; and second, the noontime noises have quieted
down in reverence for the "poor soul" being taken away. The people, who were standing around
watching the paramedics load the person into the ambulance and then drive off, is reminiscent
of a funeral; the people at the "funeral" had a moment of silence for the person, as people do at
traditional wakes and funerals. The person's life is "nearly at an end;" he/she will take with
them the "unique random blend of families and fashions" that has made up their unique life.
Happiness and love are fleeting, but death is the only thing that we can truly count on in life.
The person's ties to their earthly existence are fading. Gone are the days of love with loved
ones. He/she is now unreachable inside the ambulance. The traffic parts to let the ambulance
through; the closer to the hospital they get, the further that person is from their life. These are
his/her last moments. Who we are, no longer matters, death is all there is now.

High Windows
"Swinging London" was a term coined by Time magazine, in their April 15, 1966 issue, in
order to define the culture and fashion scene in 1960s London. Philip Larkin's poem High
Windows was written in 1967 amidst the "Summer of Love," in London. The "summer of love"
introduced drug use and "free" sex. During this summer, the Beatles released what a lot of
people consider to be their greatest album: "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
Religion's hold on youth began to wan with this new generation of "free thinkers." Sex was
both talked about and done indiscriminately, which challenged the Church's authority because
until now sex before marriage was seen as whorish. The young took charge of their bodies and
minds and revolutionized society's tendency to be conservative. Larkin appears to be envious
of this generation, because it was everything that he had hoped for when he was their age.
Larkin was a life-long bachelor; he had several sexual relationships, but was never married.
This new generation brought sex into the forefront; no longer did people whisper about it in
locked up rooms with the curtains drawn, participating in and enjoying sex was no longer
shameful.
The title of the poem High Windows has both a literal and metaphorical meaning. Literally, the
high windows can be referring to a window that is on a second-floor of a building or higher, or
the stained glass windows that are found in churches. "In symbology, [windows are] openings
that admit supernatural lightLight from outside or from above corresponds to God's spirit,
and the window itself to the Virgin Mary" (Biedermann 382). If you define each word
individually you get: "high" is an elevated place, or exalted in character; "windows" are
openings in walls where you can look out, or an interval of time during which certain
conditions or opportunity exists. I believe that Larkin meant for the title to have a two-fold
meaning: on the one hand, "high windows" is an image of religion and God; on the other hand,
"high windows" described a period of time that superior to the times that came before it (e.g.
summer of love).
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise (lines 1-4)
The speaker of this poem, who is most likely Larkin, sees some kids who he believes are
sexually active, and he is happy. It is unclear whether the speaker is looking down on the kids
from a high window or whether he just happened to pass them on the street. He calls them
"kids" not because they are kids, but because they are a lot younger than him. Even if it is the
"summer of love" I doubt that underage kids would be so open about their sexuality. Using
birth control is a big slap in the face of the previous conservative generations, because the kids
are rejecting the previous generation's morals. Conservatives were against birth control because
it called into question: family obligation versus personal freedom, state intervening in private
lives, religion in politics, sexual morality, social welfare, and the male role in society and

relationships. This period of time in history is like a paradise to the speaker, because it meant
that he didn't have to be guilty about his own sex life. Larkin has always seemed anticonvention, which is probably one of the reasons why he never chose not to marry.
Everyone old has dreamed of all their livesBonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide (5-8)
The older generations had always secretly dreamed of a time when having sex and talking
about sex wouldn't be so taboo; keeping in mind that the speaker is assuming that everyone
thinks like him. "Bonds" refers to marriage or engagement, and "gestures" refers to the things
men do when they are courting a woman (e.g. flowers, candy, opening doors, etc.). The speaker
uses a simile to compare outdated "bonds and gestures" to an outdated "combine harvester." A
combine is a machine that harvests and threshes grain while moving over a field; if it is
outdated then it must be from the previous generation, and the premise of "swinging London"
and the "summer of love" is out with the old and in with the new. A "slide" is something that
you would find on a playground. Larkin uses the slide to show how young this new generation
is, and how they are losing their innocence when they go "own the long slide." The slide
represents a journey of self-discovery. The slide also represents a sort of baptism; when you
slide down it you are reborn into someone who embraces their sexuality and doesn't apologize
for having sex or using drugs.
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark (9-12)
The slide leads the kids to lifelong happiness. "Happiness" could be a metaphor for having sex
and experiencing an orgasm; sexual gratification. The speaker wonders if anyone ever looked
at him forty years ago and thought to themselves that these kids had the right idea, opposing
long standing traditions for newer ideals. Since the idea of God doesn't exist in this new
generation then no one has to sweat in the dark, feeling guilty about not living up to God's plan.
About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately (13-16)
No longer do you have to worry about going to hell if you have sex premarital sex, nor do you

have to hide your improper thoughts about priests. Since God doesn't exist then priests no
longer hold their significance; priests become regular people again, and can engage is normal
sexual behavior. Priests will all go down the long slide and be reborn. "Like free bloody birds"
is a simile, and it can have few meanings: first, "bloody" is British slang used as intensifier and
is also a less offensive way of saying fuck; "birds" is also British slang for attractive women or
promiscuous women. Using these definitions, the priests are free to be as fucking promiscuous
as they want. Second, "the Holy Spirit is almost always portrayed in the form of a dovedoves
also stand for the newly baptized" (Biedermann 101). Using the divine definitions, blood would
refer to Christ's blood. God is dead and the priests are free to live as sinfully as they want in
their new religion. Third, the priests are free like bloody (British slang: fucking) birds, who fly
wherever they want, and copulate with whomever they want.
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. (17-20)
The speaker's mind shifts to thoughts of high windows. I believe that the high windows that the
speaker is referring to here are those are the stained glass windows that you find in churches,
but it is also possible that he is reminiscing about when he was a kid looking up at windows
high off of the ground. Stained glass windows often depict biblical stories, and when the sun
shines on them the images become illuminated. The sun understands their significance. These
windows are from past generations; beyond these church windows there is a great big world
waiting to be discovered and experienced.

Chinua Achebe
THINGS FALL APART
Context
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930, in Ogidi, a large village in
Nigeria. Although he was the child of a Protestant missionary and received his early education
in English, his upbringing was multicultural, as the inhabitants of Ogidi still lived according to
many aspects of traditional Igbo (formerly written as Ibo) culture. Achebe attended the
Government College in Umuahia from 1944 to 1947. He graduated from University College,
Ibadan, in 1953. While he was in college, Achebe studied history and theology. He also
developed his interest in indigenous Nigerian cultures, and he rejected his Christian name,
Albert, for his indigenous one, Chinua.
In the 1950s, Achebe was one of the founders of a Nigerian literary movement that drew upon

the traditional oral culture of its indigenous peoples. In 1959, he published Things Fall Apart as
a response to novels, such as Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness, that treat Africa as a
primordial and cultureless foil for Europe. Tired of reading white mens accounts of how
primitive, socially backward, and, most important, language-less native Africans were, Achebe
sought to convey a fuller understanding of one African culture and, in so doing, give voice to
an underrepresented and exploited colonial subject.
Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s and portrays the clash between Nigerias white colonial
government and the traditional culture of the indigenous Igbo people. Achebes novel shatters
the stereotypical European portraits of native Africans. He is careful to portray the complex,
advanced social institutions and artistic traditions of Igbo culture prior to its contact with
Europeans. Yet he is just as careful not to stereotype the Europeans; he offers varying
depictions of the white man, such as the mostly benevolent Mr. Brown, the zealous Reverend
Smith, and the ruthlessly calculating District Commissioner.
Achebes education in English and exposure to European customs have allowed him to capture
both the European and the African perspectives on colonial expansion, religion, race, and
culture. His decision to write Things Fall Apart in English is an important one. Achebe wanted
this novel to respond to earlier colonial accounts of Africa; his choice of language was thus
political. Unlike some later African authors who chose to revitalize native languages as a form
of resistance to colonial culture, Achebe wanted to achieve cultural revitalization within and
through English. Nevertheless, he manages to capture the rhythm of the Igbo language and he
integrates Igbo vocabulary into the narrative.
Achebe has become renowned throughout the world as a father of modern African literature,
essayist, and professor of English literature at Bard College in New York. But Achebes
achievements are most concretely reflected by his prominence in Nigerias academic culture
and in its literary and political institutions. He worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Company
for over a decade and later became an English professor at the University of Nigeria. He has
also been quite influential in the publication of new Nigerian writers. In 1967, he co-founded a
publishing company with a Nigerian poet named Christopher Okigbo and in 1971, he began
editingOkike, a respected journal of Nigerian writing. In 1984, he founded Uwa ndi Igbo, a
bilingual magazine containing a great deal of information about Igbo culture. He has been
active in Nigerian politics since the 1960s, and many of his novels address the post-colonial
social and political problems that Nigeria still faces.
Analysis of Major Characters
Okonkwo

Okonkwo, the son of the effeminate and lazy Unoka, strives to make his way in a world that
seems to value manliness. In so doing, he rejects everything for which he believes his father
stood. Unoka was idle, poor, profligate, cowardly, gentle, and interested in music and
conversation. Okonkwo consciously adopts opposite ideals and becomes productive, wealthy,
thrifty, brave, violent, and adamantly opposed to music and anything else that he perceives to
be soft, such as conversation and emotion. He is stoic to a fault.
Okonkwo achieves great social and financial success by embracing these ideals. He marries
three women and fathers several children. Nevertheless, just as his father was at odds with the
values of the community around him, so too does Okonkwo find himself unable to adapt to
changing times as the white man comes to live among the Umuofians. As it becomes evident
that compliance rather than violence constitutes the wisest principle for survival, Okonkwo
realizes that he has become a relic, no longer able to function within his changing society.
Okonkwo is a tragic hero in the classical sense: although he is a superior character, his tragic
flawthe equation of manliness with rashness, anger, and violencebrings about his own
destruction. Okonkwo is gruff, at times, and usually unable to express his feelings (the narrator
frequently uses the word inwardly in reference to Okonkwos emotions). But his emotions
are indeed quite complex, as his manly values conflict with his unmanly ones, such as
fondness for Ikemefuna and Ezinma. The narrator privileges us with information that
Okonkwos fellow clan members do not havethat Okonkwo surreptitiously follows Ekwefi
into the forest in pursuit of Ezinma, for exampleand thus allows us to see the tender, worried
father beneath the seemingly indifferent exterior.

Nwoye
Nwoye, Okonkwos oldest son, struggles in the shadow of his powerful, successful, and
demanding father. His interests are different from Okonkwos and resemble more closely those
of Unoka, his grandfather. He undergoes many beatings, at a loss for how to please his father,
until the arrival of Ikemefuna, who becomes like an older brother and teaches him a gentler
form of successful masculinity. As a result, Okonkwo backs off, and Nwoye even starts to win
his grudging approval. Nwoye remains conflicted, however: though he makes a show of
scorning feminine things in order to please his father, he misses his mothers stories.
With the unconscionable murder of Ikemefuna, however, Nwoye retreats into himself and finds
himself forever changed. His reluctance to accept Okonkwos masculine values turns into pure
embitterment toward him and his ways. When missionaries come to Mbanta, Nwoyes hope
and faith are reawakened, and he eventually joins forces with them. Although Okonkwo curses

his lot for having borne so effeminate a son and disowns Nwoye, Nwoye appears to have
found peace at last in leaving the oppressive atmosphere of his fathers tyranny.

Ezinma
Ezinma, Okonkwos favorite daughter and the only child of Ekwefi, is bold in the way that she
approachesand even sometimes contradictsher father. Okonkwo remarks to himself
multiple times that he wishes she had been born a boy, since he considers her to have such a
masculine spirit. Ezinma alone seems to win Okonkwos full attention, affection, and,
ironically, respect. She and he are kindred spirits, which boosts her confidence and
precociousness. She grows into a beautiful young woman who sensibly agrees to put off
marriage until her family returns from exile so as to help her father leverage his sociopolitical
power most effectively. In doing so, she shows an approach similar to that of Okonkwo: she
puts strategy ahead of emotion.

Mr. Brown
Mr. Brown represents Achebes attempt to craft a well-rounded portrait of the colonial presence
by tempering bad personalities with good ones. Mr. Browns successor, Reverend Smith, is
zealous, vengeful, small-minded, and manipulative; he thus stands in contrast to Mr. Brown,
who, on the other hand, is benevolent if not always beneficent. Mr. Brown succeeds in winning
a large number of converts because he listens to the villagers stories, beliefs, and opinions. He
also accepts the converts unconditionally. His conversation with Akunna represents this
sympathetic stance. The derisive comments that Reverend Smith makes about Mr. Brown after
the latters departure illustrate the colonial intolerance for any kind of sympathy for, and
genuine interest in, the native culture. The surname Brown hints at his ability to navigate
successfully the clear-cut racial division between the colonizers and the colonized.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Struggle Between Change and Tradition
As a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall Apart deals with how the
prospect and reality of change affect various characters. The tension about whether change

should be privileged over tradition often involves questions of personal status. Okonkwo, for
example, resists the new political and religious orders because he feels that they are not manly
and that he himself will not be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate them. To some
extent, Okonkwos resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of losing societal status.
His sense of self-worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by which society judges
him. This system of evaluating the self inspires many of the clans outcasts to embrace
Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value system a refuge from the
Igbo cultural values that place them below everyone else. In their new community, these
converts enjoy a more elevated status.
The villagers in general are caught between resisting and embracing change and they face the
dilemma of trying to determine how best to adapt to the reality of change. Many of the villagers
are excited about the new opportunities and techniques that the missionaries bring. This
European influence, however, threatens to extinguish the need for the mastery of traditional
methods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking. These traditional methods, once crucial
for survival, are now, to varying degrees, dispensable. Throughout the novel, Achebe shows
how dependent such traditions are upon storytelling and language and thus how quickly the
abandonment of the Igbo language for English could lead to the eradication of these traditions.
Varying Interpretations of Masculinity
Okonkwos relationship with his late father shapes much of his violent and ambitious
demeanor. He wants to rise above his fathers legacy of spendthrift, indolent behavior, which
he views as weak and therefore effeminate. This association is inherent in the clans language
the narrator mentions that the word for a man who has not taken any of the expensive,
prestige-indicating titles isagbala, which also means woman. But, for the most part,
Okonkwos idea of manliness is not the clans. He associates masculinity with aggression and
feels that anger is the only emotion that he should display. For this reason, he frequently beats
his wives, even threatening to kill them from time to time. We are told that he does not think
about things, and we see him act rashly and impetuously. Yet others who are in no way
effeminate do not behave in this way. Obierika, unlike Okonkwo, was a man who thought
about things. Whereas Obierika refuses to accompany the men on the trip to kill Ikemefuna,
Okonkwo not only volunteers to join the party that will execute his surrogate son but also
violently stabs him with his machete simply because he is afraid of appearing weak.
Okonkwos seven-year exile from his village only reinforces his notion that men are stronger
than women. While in exile, he lives among the kinsmen of his motherland but resents the
period in its entirety. The exile is his opportunity to get in touch with his feminine side and to
acknowledge his maternal ancestors, but he keeps reminding himself that his maternal kinsmen

are not as warlike and fierce as he remembers the villagers of Umuofia to be. He faults them
for their preference of negotiation, compliance, and avoidance over anger and bloodshed. In
Okonkwos understanding, his uncle Uchendu exemplifies this pacifist (and therefore
somewhat effeminate) mode.
Language as a Sign of Cultural Difference
Language is an important theme in Things Fall Apart on several levels. In demonstrating the
imaginative, often formal language of the Igbo, Achebe emphasizes that Africa is not the silent
or incomprehensible continent that books such as Heart of Darkness made it out to be. Rather,
by peppering the novel with Igbo words, Achebe shows that the Igbo language is too complex
for direct translation into English. Similarly, Igbo culture cannot be understood within the
framework of European colonialist values. Achebe also points out that Africa has
many different languages: the villagers of Umuofia, for example, make fun of Mr. Browns
translator because his language is slightly different from their own.
On a macroscopic level, it is extremely significant that Achebe chose to writeThings Fall
Apart in Englishhe clearly intended it to be read by the West at least as much, if not more,
than by his fellow Nigerians. His goal was to critique and emend the portrait of Africa that was
painted by so many writers of the colonial period. Doing so required the use of English, the
language of those colonial writers. Through his inclusion of proverbs, folktales, and songs
translated from the Igbo language, Achebe managed to capture and convey the rhythms,
structures, cadences, and beauty of the Igbo language.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and
inform the texts major themes.
Chi
The concept of chi is discussed at various points throughout the novel and is important to our
understanding of Okonkwo as a tragic hero. The chi is an individuals personal god, whose
merit is determined by the individuals good fortune or lack thereof. Along the lines of this
interpretation, one can explain Okonkwos tragic fate as the result of a problematic chia
thought that occurs to Okonkwo at several points in the novel. For the clan believes, as the
narrator tells us in Chapter 14, a man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi. But there is
another understanding of chi that conflicts with this definition. In Chapter 4, the narrator
relates, according to an Igbo proverb, that when a man says yes his chisays yes also.
According to this understanding, individuals will their own destinies. Thus, depending upon

our interpretation of chi, Okonkwo seems either more or less responsible for his own tragic
death. Okonkwo himself shifts between these poles: when things are going well for him, he
perceives himself as master and maker of his own destiny; when things go badly, however, he
automatically disavows responsibility and asks why he should be so ill-fated.
Animal Imagery
In their descriptions, categorizations, and explanations of human behavior and wisdom, the
Igbo often use animal anecdotes to naturalize their rituals and beliefs. The presence of animals
in their folklore reflects the environment in which they livenot yet modernized by
European influence. Though the colonizers, for the most part, view the Igbos understanding of
the world as rudimentary, the Igbo perceive these animal stories, such as the account of how the
tortoises shell came to be bumpy, as logical explanations of natural phenomena. Another
important animal image is the figure of the sacred python. Enochs alleged killing and eating of
the python symbolizes the transition to a new form of spirituality and a new religious order.
Enochs disrespect of the python clashes with the Igbos reverence for it, epitomizing the
incompatibility of colonialist and indigenous values.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or
concepts.
Locusts
Achebe depicts the locusts that descend upon the village in highly allegorical terms that
prefigure the arrival of the white settlers, who will feast on and exploit the resources of the
Igbo. The fact that the Igbo eat these locusts highlights how innocuous they take them to be.
Similarly, those who convert to Christianity fail to realize the damage that the culture of the
colonizer does to the culture of the colonized.
The language that Achebe uses to describe the locusts indicates their symbolic status. The
repetition of words like settled and every emphasizes the suddenly ubiquitous presence of
these insects and hints at the way in which the arrival of the white settlers takes the Igbo off
guard. Furthermore, the locusts are so heavy they break the tree branches, which symbolizes
the fracturing of Igbo traditions and culture under the onslaught of colonialism and white
settlement. Perhaps the most explicit clue that the locusts symbolize the colonists is Obierikas
comment in Chapter 15: the Oracle . . . said that other white men were on their way. They
were locusts. . . .

Fire
Okonkwo is associated with burning, fire, and flame throughout the novel, alluding to his
intense and dangerous angerthe only emotion that he allows himself to display. Yet the
problem with fire, as Okonkwo acknowledges in Chapters 17 and 24, is that it destroys
everything it consumes. Okonkwo is both physically destructivehe kills Ikemefuna and
Ogbuefi Ezeudus sonand emotionally destructivehe suppresses his fondness for
Ikemefuna and Ezinma in favor of a colder, more masculine aura. Just as fire feeds on itself
until all that is left is a pile of ash, Okonkwo eventually succumbs to his intense rage, allowing
it to rule his actions until it destroys him.
Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and
analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:
In a word, the novel "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing can be best described as
complex. It is structured in a complex form intended to mimic the complexity of the life of the
main character, Anna. Although complex, the form is actually an attempt by Anna to simplify
and compartmentalize what she sees as disorder and chaos in her world. The main plot focuses
on Anna's quest for wholeness but at the same time addresses difficult issues such as gender
relations, love and marriage, suicide, child rearing and politics.
The novel is comprised of a frame story interrupted by excerpts from Anna's four notebooks.
The frame story, Free Women, details a portion of Anna's life. The story begins shortly after
Michael, Anna's married lover, ends their five-year relationship. Anna's friend Molly has just
returned from a yearlong trip and is dealing with her son's lack of direction in life. Anna is
attempting to deal with this loss as well as trying to raise a daughter on her own, deal with a
friend's suicide attempt and overcome her blocked writing ability.
This frame story is divided into five sections, each separated by excerpts from Anna's
notebooks. These notebooks each details one section of Anna's life. Her black notebook
contains information about the time period in which she lived in Africa. An experience in
Africa where a black woman was impregnated by one of Anna's friends became the
background for Anna's award winning novel. Anna's red notebook includes details of her
membership in the British Communist Party. The next notebook, the yellow notebook, contains
a partial manuscript of a novel as well as ideas for other short stories and novels. This novel,
called The Shadow of the Third, closely mirrors Anna's own life. In the blue notebook, Anna
attempts to keep a day-to-day factual record of her life. Anna makes a decision to stop
separating her life into sections and integrates all of her life into one notebook - referred to as
the golden notebook.

Fragmentation
The main theme of this novel is the idea of that a person can become fragmented. Anna's
fragmentation is evidenced by her four notebooks. Anna keeps these notebooks in an effort to
keep these different parts of herself compartmentalized and sanitary. In reality, it is this
inability to regard all her experiences as a whole that keeps Anna from being a healthy person.
It is only after she is able to integrate these individual parts of herself in her final notebook, the
golden notebook, that Anna is able to being the process of healing.
In addition to Anna's personal fragmentation the idea of the division of a person is seen in other
characters on a more general sense. Tommy, for instance, fights against being torn apart by the
desires of his parents. His father wants him to be a businessman while his mother wants him to
stay away...
In reflecting the complexities and entanglements of contemporary life, Lessing offers a
complete exploration of an individual trying to discover who she is in this ever-changing
environment. The interior mindscape of the individual reflects the exterior world in which we
live.
Having written a successful novel that others misread, including individuals who will be
creating a film version, Anna realizes that she herself mistakenly approaches her memories
with nostalgia and colors the truth. Thus, she attempts to record events in diary formto
present the truth more accurately. Anna's attempts to meticulously record the "truth" in her
notebooks, however, fail. Eventually, Anna realizes that no one approach or theory will allow
an individual to recognize the whole person.
Although Anna's state of mental disarray does not consume the bulk of the book, the
disintegration provides a realistic portrayal of mental confusion. Such existential explorations
will explore suicidal...
Anna Wulf
Anna is the main character of the novel. All events are seen through her eyes. She is a rather
promiscuous, middle-aged woman living off the proceeds of a best selling novel she wrote
based on time she spent in Africa. After becoming pregnant, Anna marries Max Wulf, whom
she doesn't love. They are married less than one year. Anna raises her daughter, Janet, as a
single-mother. After her marriage to Max, Anna becomes involved with a married man. She
and Michael have a five-year affair. When this affair ends, Anna is heart-broken and
disillusioned. Another facet that adds to Anna's disillusionment is the problems in the
communist party, a political party of which she was a member. Anna admits to her friends she
feels as if her life is cracking apart. She keeps a series of four notebooks. Each of these
notebooks holds information about one particular...
Although published simultaneously in the United States and Great Britain, The Golden
Notebook did not gain wide readership until the 1970s when feminists embraced the novel for
its realistic portrayal of the life of single women trying to raise their children outside the
boundaries of tradition. Lessing's "free women" concept, in alignment with most feminist

beliefs, helped not only to redefine sexuality issues but also provided literary models of the
now famous motto "the personal is political" that so many feminist critics have maintained.
Since then, the academic world has recognized the postmodern themes, narrative, and structure
of the novel.
Having established herself as a writer interested in politics and recognized and self-defined as
an author of realistic fiction, Lessing offers a different approach to novel writing in The Golden
Notebook. The novel's structure, themes, and characters support a postmodern view. Not only
the characters, but also the...
Salman Rushdie
The Prophet's Hair
The Prophets Hair is based on story of the theft of a relic containing a hair of the Prophet
Muhammad. The tale is a fantastic account of the miraculous but disastrous events befalling all
those who come into contact with it. The stolen relic is found by a moneylender, Hashim.
Instead of returning it to the mosque from which it was taken, he keeps it. Under its influence,
this previously secular Muslim becomes orthodox to the point of extremism and hurt his family
by adopting it.
His son, Atta, tries to take the hair back to Mosque, but at the last minute he finds out that the
hair is no longer with him because there is a hole in his pocket. Then Huma comes up with
another plan, and decides that it will have to be stolen by hiring a thief who takes the hair amid
a scene of carnage. However, she ends up with a disaster.
At the end of story, Hashim accidentally kills his own daughter, but he does not realize what he
has done until he turns the light on. Finally, the thief is hunted and shot by the police, but his
four crippled sons and blind wife have miraculously been cured by their contact with the relic.
Rushdie describes Hashims family as an insecure and frightened family. The story is
concerned with an iconic object, the hair, and its relocation from a holy place, the shrine, to the
profane space of the outside world, then to a secret hiding place in the moneylenders locked
study, and finally back to the shrine again.
Early in 19, when Srinagar was under the spell of a winter so fierce it could crack mens
bones as if they were glass, a young man upon whose cold-pinked skin there lay, like a frost,
the unmistakable sheen of wealth was to be seen entering the most wretched and disreputable
part of the city, where the houses of wood and corrugated iron seemed perpetually on the verge
of losing their balance, and asking in low, grave tones where he might go to engage the services
of a dependably professional thief. The young mans name was Atta, and the rogues in that part
of town directed him gleefully into ever-darker and less public alleys, until in a yard wet with
the blood of a slaughtered chicken he was set upon by two men whose faces he never saw,
robbed of the substantial bank-roll which he had insanely brought on his solitary excursion, and
beaten within an inch of his life.

Night fell. His body was carried by anonymous hands to the edge of the lake, whence it was
transported by shikara across the water and deposited, torn and bleeding, on the deserted
embankment of the canal which led to the gardens of Shalimar. At dawn the next morning a
flower-vendor was rowing his boat through water to which the cold of the night had given the
cloudy consistency of wild honey when he saw the prone form of young Atta, who was just
beginning to stir and moan, and on whose now deathly pale skin the sheen of wealth could still
be made out dimly beneath an actual layer of frost. The flower vendor moored his craft and by
stooping over the mouth of the injured man was able to learn the poor fellows address, which
was mumbled through lips which could scarcely move; whereupon, hoping for a large tip, the
hawker rowed Atta home to a large house on the shores of the lake, where a painfully beautiful
girl and her equally handsome mother, neither of whom, it was clear from their eyes, had slept
a wink from worrying, screamed at the sight of their Atta who was the elder brother of the
beautiful girl lying motionless amid the funereally stunted winter blooms of the hopeful
florist. The flower-vendor was indeed paid off handsomely, not least to ensure his silence, and
plays no further part in our story. Atta himself, suffering terribly from exposure as well as a
broken skull, entered a coma which caused the citys finest doctors to shrug helplessly. It was
therefore all the more remarkable that on the very same evening the most wretched and
disreputable part of the city received a second unexpected visitor. This was Huma, the sister of
the unfortunate young man, and her question was the same as her brothers, and asked in the
same low, grave tones: Where may I hire a thief?
The story of the rich idiot who had come looking for a burglar was already common knowledge
in those insalubrious gullies, but this time the girl added: I should say that I am carrying no
money, nor am I wearing any jewels; my father has disowned me and will pay no ransom if I
am kidnapped; and a letter has been lodged with the Commissioner of Police, my uncle, to be
opened in the event of my not being safe at home by morning. In that letter he will find full
details of my journey here, and he will move Heaven and Earth to punish my assailants. Her
extraordinary beauty, which was visible even through the enormous welts and bruises
disfiguring her arms and forehead, coupled with the oddity of her inquiries, had attracted a
sizable group of curious onlookers, and because her little speech seemed to them to cover just
about everything, no one attempted to injure her in any way, although there were some raucous
comments to the effect that it was pretty peculiar for someone who was trying to hire a crook to
invoke the protection of a high-up policeman uncle. She was directed into ever-darker and less
public alleys until finally in a gully as dark as ink an old woman with eyes which stared so
piercingly that Huma instantly understood she was blind motioned her through a doorway from
which darkness seemed to be pouring like smoke. Clenching her fists, angrily ordering her
heart to behave normally, the girl followed the old woman into the gloom-wrapped house.
The faintest conceivable rivulet of candle-light trickled through the darkness; following this
unreliable yellow thread (because she could no longer see the old lady), Huma received a
sudden sharp blow to the shins and cried out involuntarily, after which she instantly bit her lip,
angry at having revealed her mounting terror to whatever waited there shrouded in black. She
had, in fact, collided with a low table on which a single candle burned and beyond which a
mountainous figure could be made out, sitting crosslegged on the floor. Sit, sit, said a mans
calm, deep voice, and her legs, needing no more flowery invitation, buckled beneath her at the
terse command. Clutching her left hand in her right, she forced her voice to respond evenly:

And you, sir, will be the thief I have been requesting?

Shifting its weight very slightly, the shadow-mountain informed her that all criminal activity
originating in this zone was well organised and also centrally controlled, so that all requests for
what might be termed freelance work had to be channelled through this room. He demanded
comprehensive details of the crime to be committed, including a precise inventory of items to
be acquired, also a clear statement of all financial inducements being offered with no gratuities
excluded, plus, for filing purposes only, a summary of the motives for the application. At this,
Huma, as though remembering something, stiffened both in body and resolve and replied
loudly that her motives were entirely a matter for herself; that she would discuss details with no
one but the thief himself; but that the rewards she proposed could only be described as lavish.
All I am willing to say to you, sir, since this appears to be some sort of employment agency, is
that in return for such lavish rewards I must have the most desperate criminal at your disposal,
a man for whom life holds no terrors, not even the fear of God. The worst of fellows, I tell you
nothing less will do!
Now a paraffin storm-lantern was lighted, and Huma saw facing her a grey-haired giant down
whose left cheek ran the most sinister of scars, a cicatrice in the shape of the Arabic letter S.
She had the insupportably nostalgic notion that the bogymen of her childhood nursery had risen
up to confront her, because her ayah had always forestalled any incipient acts of disobedience
by threatening Huma and Atta: You dont watch out and Ill send that one to steal you away
that Sheikh Sin, the Thief of Thieves! Here, grey-haired but unquestionably scarred, was the
notorious criminal himself and was she crazy, were her ears playing tricks, or had he truly
just announced that, given the circumstances, he himself was the only man for the job?
Struggling wildly against the newborn goblins of nostalgia, Huma warned the fearsome
volunteer that only a matter of extreme urgency and peril would have brought her unescorted
into these ferocious streets. Because we can afford no last-minute backings-out, she
continued, I am determined to tell you everything, keeping back no secrets whatsoever. If,
after hearing me out, you are still prepared to proceed, then we shall do everything in our
power both to assist you and to make you rich. The old thief shrugged, nodded, spat. Huma
began her story.
Six days ago, everything in the household of her father, the wealthy moneylender Hashim, had
been as it always was. At breakfast her mother had spooned khichri lovingly onto the
moneylenders plate; the conversation had been filled with those expressions of courtesy and
solicitude on which the family prided itself. Hashim was fond of pointing out that while he was
not a godly man he set great store by living honourably in the world. In that spacious lakeside
residence, all outsiders were greeted with the same formality and respect, even those
unfortunates who came to negotiate for small fragments of Hashims great fortune, and of
whom he naturally asked an interest rate of 71 per cent, partly, as he told his khichri-spooning
wife, to teach these people the value of money: let them only learn that, and they will be cured
of this fever of borrowing, borrowing all the time so you see that if my plans succeed, I shall
put myself out of business! In their children, Atta and Huma, the moneylender and his wife
had sought, successfully, to inculcate the virtues of thrift, plain dealing, perfect manners and a
healthy independence of spirit.
Breakfast ended; the family wished each other a fulfilling day. Within a few hours, however,
the glassy contentment of that household, of that life of porcelain delicacy and alabaster

sensibilities, was to be shattered beyond all hope of repair.

The moneylender summoned his personal shikara and was on the verge of stepping into it
when, attracted by a glint of silver, he noticed a small phial floating between the boat and his
private quay. On an impulse, he scooped it out of the glutinous water: it was a cylinder of tinted
glass cased in exquisitely-wrought silver, and Hashim saw within its walls a silver pendant
bearing a single strand of human hair. Closing his fist around this unique discovery, he
muttered to the boatman that hed changed his plans, and hurried to his sanctum where, behind
closed doors, he feasted his eyes on his find. There can be no doubt that Hashim the
moneylender knew from the first that he was in possession of the famous holy hair of the
Prophet Muhammad, whose theft from the shrine at Hazratbal the previous morning had
created an unprecedented hue and cry in the valley. The thieves no doubt alarmed by the
pandemonium, by the procession through the streets of the endless ululating crocodiles of
lamentation, by the riots, the political ramifications and by the massive police search which
was commanded and carried out by men whose entire careers now hung upon this single lost
hair had evidently panicked and hurled the phial into the gelatine bosom of the lake. Having
found it by a stroke of good fortune, Hashims duty as a citizen was clear: the hair must be
restored to its shrine, and the state to equanimity and peace.
But the moneylender had formed a different notion. All about him in his study was the
evidence of colletors mania: great cases full of impaled butterflies from Gulmarg, three dozen
miniature cannons cast from the melted-down metal of the great gun Zamzama, innumerable
swords, a Naga spear, ninety-four terracotta camels of the sort sold on railway-station platforms
and an infinitude of tiny sandalwood dolls, which had originally been carved to serve as
childrens bathtime toys. And after all, Hashim told himself, the Prophet would have
disapproved mightily of this relic-worship: he abhorred the idea of being deified, so by keeping
this rotting hair from its mindless devotees, I perform do I not? a finer service than I would
by returning it! Naturally, I dont want it for its religious value: Im a man of the world, of this
world; I see it purely as a secular object of great rarity and blinding beauty in short, its the
phial I desire, not the hair. There are American millionaires who buy stolen paintings and hide
them away they would know how I feel. I must, must have it!
Every collector must share his treasures with one other human being, and Hashim summoned
and told his only son Atta, who was deeply perturbed but, having been sworn to secrecy, only
spilt the beans when the troubles became too terrible to bear. The youth left his father alone in
the crowded solitude of his collections. Hashim was sitting erect in a hard chair, gazing intently
at the beautiful phial.
It was well-known that the moneylender never ate lunch, so it was not until evening that a
servant entered the sanctum to summon his master to the dining-table. He found Hashim as
Atta had left him. The same, but not the same: because now the moneylender looked swollen,
distended, his eyes bulged even more than they always had, they were red-rimmed and his
knuckles were white. It was as though he was on the point of bursting, as though, under the
influence of the misappropriated relic, he had filled up with some spectral fluid which might at
any moment ooze uncontrollably from his every bodily opening. He had to be helped to the
table, and then the explosion did indeed take place. Seemingly careless of the effect of his
words on the carefully-constructed and fragile constitution of the familys life, Hashim began
to gush, to spume streams of terrible truths. In horrified silence, his children heard their father

turn upon his wife, and reveal to her that for many years their marriage had been the worst of
his afflictions. An end to politeness! he thundered. An end to hypocrisy! He revealed to his
family the existence of a mistress; he informed them of his regular visits to paid women. He
told his wife that, far from being the principal beneficiary of his will, she would receive no
more than the seventh portion which was her due under Islamic law. Then he turned upon his
children, screaming at Atta for his lack of academic ability A dope! I have been cursed with
a dope! and accusing his daughter of lasciviousness, because she went around the city
barefaced, which was unseemly for any good Muslim girl to do: she should, he commanded,
enter purdah forthwith. He left the table without having eaten and fell into the deep sleep of a
man who has got many things off his chest, leaving his children stunned, his wife in tears, and
the dinner going cold on the sideboard under the gaze of an anticipatory bearer.
At five oclock the next morning the moneylender forced his family to rise, wash and say their
prayers; from that time on, he began to pray five times daily for the first time in his life, and his
wife and children were obliged to do likewise. Before breakfast, Huma saw the servants, under
her fathers direction, constructing a great heap of books in the garden and setting fire to it. The
only volume left untouched was the Quran, which Hashim wrapped in a silken cloth and placed
on a table in the hall. He ordered each member of his family to read passages from this book
for at least two hours per day. Visits to the cinema were also forbidden. And if Atta invited
male friends to the house, Huma was to retire to her room.
By now, the family had entered a state of wild-eyed horror; but there was worse to come. That
afternoon, a trembling debtor arrived at the house to confess his inability to pay the latest
instalment of interest owed, and made the mistake of reminding Hashim, in somewhat
blustering fashion, of the Qurans strictures against usury. The moneylender, flying into a rage,
attacked the fellow with one of his large collection of bull-whips. By mischance, later the same
day a second defaulter came to plead for time, and was seen fleeing Hashims study with a
great gash on his arm, because Humas father had called him a thief of other mens money and
had tried to cut off the fellows right hand with one of the thirty-eight kukri knives hanging on
the study walls. These breaches of the familys laws of decorum alarmed Atta and Huma, and
when, that evening, their mother attempted to calm Hashim down, he struck her on the face
with an open hand. Atta leapt to his mothers defence and he, too, was sent flying. From now
on, Hashim bellowed, theres going to be some discipline around here!
The moneylenders wife began a fit of hysteria which continued throughout the night and the
following day, and which so provoked her husband that he threatened her with divorce, at
which she fled to her room, locked the door and subsided into a raga of sniffling. Huma now
lost her composure, challenged her father openly, announced (with that same independence of
spirit which he had encouraged in her) that she would wear no cloth over her face: apart from
anything else, it was bad for the eyes. On hearing this, her father disowned her at once and
gave her one week in which to pack her bags.
By the fourth day, the fear in the air of the house had become so thick that it was difficult to
walk around. Atta told his shock-numbed sister: We are descending to gutter-level but I
know what must be done.
That afternoon, Hashim left home accompanied by two hired thugs to extract the unpaid dues
from his two insolvent clients. Atta went immediately to his fathers study. Being the son and
heir, he possessed his own key to the moneylenders safe, which he now used, and removing

the little phial from its hiding-place, he slipped it into his trouser pocket and re-locked the safe
door.
Now he told Huma the secret of what his father had found in Lake Dal, and cried: Maybe Im
crazy maybe the awful things that are happening have made me cracked but I am convinced
there will be no peace in our house until this hair is out of it. His sister instantly agreed that the
hair must be returned and Atta set off in a hired shikara to Hazratbal mosque. Only when the
boat had delivered him into the throng of the distraught faithful which was swirling around the
desecrated shrine did Atta discover that the relic was no longer in his pocket. There was only a
hole, which his mother, usually so attentive to household matters, must have overlooked under
the stress of recent events ... Attas initial surge of chagrin was quickly replaced by a feeling of
profound relief. Suppose, he imagined, I had already announced to the mullahs that the hair
was on my person! They would never have believed me now and this mob would have
lynched me! At any rate, its gone, and thats a load off my mind. Feeling more contented than
he had for days, the young man returned home.
Here he found his sister bruised and weeping in the hall; upstairs, in her bedroom, his mother
wailed like a brand-new widow. He begged Huma to tell him what had happened, and when she
replied that their father, returning from his brutal business trip, had once again noticed a glint
of silver between boat and quay, had once again scooped up the errant relic, and was
consequently in a rage to end all rages, having beaten the truth out of her then Atta buried his
face in his hands and sobbed that, in his opinion, that hair was persecuting them, that it had
come back to finish the job.
Now it was Humas turn to think of a way out of their troubles. While her arms turned black
and blue and great stains spread across her forehead, she hugged her brother and whispered to
him her determination to get rid of the hair at all costs: she repeated this last phrase several
times. The hair, she then declared, must be stolen. It was stolen from the mosque; it can be
stolen from this house. But it must be a genuine robbery, carried out by a real thief, not by one
of us who are the hairs victims by a thief so desperate that he fears neither capture nor
curses. Of course, she added, the theft would be ten times harder to pull off now that their
father, knowing that there had already been one attempt on the relic, was certainly on his guard.
Can you do it? Huma, in a room lit by candle and storm-lantern, ended her account with this
question: What assurances can you give that the job holds no terrors for you still? The
criminal, spitting, stated that he was not in the habit of providing references, as a cook might,
or a gardener, but he was not alarmed so easily, not by any childrens djinn of a curse. The girl
had to be content with this boast, and proceeded to describe the details of the proposed
burglary. Since my brothers failure to restore the hair to the mosque, my father has taken to
sleeping with his precious treasure under his pillow. However, he sleeps alone and very
energetically: only enter his room without waking him, and he will certainly have tossed and
turned quite enough to make the theft a simple matter. When you have the phial, come to my
room, and here she handed Sheikh Sin a plan of her home, and I will hand over all the
jewellery owned by my mother and by myself. You will find ... It is worth ... You will be able to
get a fortune for it ... It was clear that her self-control was weakening and that she was on the
point of physical collapse. Tonight, she burst out finally, you must come tonight!
No sooner had she left the room than the old criminals body was convulsed by a fit of
coughing: he spat blood into an old tin can. The great Sheikh, the Thief of Thieves, was also

an old and sick man, and every day the time drew nearer when some young pretender to his
power would stick a dagger in his stomach. A lifelong addiction to gambling had left him as
poor as he had been when, decades ago, he had started out in this line of work as a mere
pickpockets apprentice: in the extraordinary commission he had accepted from the
moneylenders daughter he saw his opportunity of amassing enough wealth, at a stroke, to
leave the valley and acquire the luxury of a respectable death which would leave his stomach
intact.
As for the Prophets hair, well, neither he nor his blind wife had ever had much to say for
prophets that was one thing they had in common with the moneylenders clan. It would not
do, however, to reveal the nature of this, his last crime, to his four sons: to his consternation,
they had all grown up into hopelessly devout fellows, who even spoke absurdly of making the
pilgrimage to Mecca some day. But how will you go? their father would laugh at them,
because, with the absolutist love of a parent, he had made sure they were all provided with a
lifelong source of high income by crippling them at birth, so that, as they dragged themselves
around the city, they earned excellent money in the begging business. The children, then, could
look after themselves; he and his wife would be off with the jewel-boxes of the moneylenders
women. It was a timely chance indeed that had brought the beautiful bruised girl into his corner
of the town.
That night, the large house on the shore of the lake lay blindly waiting, with silence lapping at
its walls. A burglars night: clouds in the sky and mists on the winter water. Hashim the
moneylender was asleep, the only member of his family to whom sleep had come that night. In
another room, his son Atta lay deep in the coils of his coma with a blood-clot forming on his
brain, watched over by a mother who had let down her long greying hair to show her grief, a
mother who placed warm compresses on his head with gestures redolent of impotence. In yet a
third bedroom Huma waited, fully dressed, amidst the jewel-heavy caskets of her desperation.
At last a bulbul sang softly from the garden below her window and, creeping downstairs, she
opened a door to the bird, on whose face there was a scar in the shape of the Arabic letter S.
Noiseless now, the bird flew up the stairs behind her. At the head of the staircase they parted,
moving in opposite directions along the corridor of their conspiracy without a glance at one
another.
Entering the moneylenders room with professional ease, the burglar, Sin, discovered that
Humas predictions had been wholly accurate. Hashim lay sprawled diagonally across his bed,
the pillow untenanted by his head, the prize easily accessible. Step by padded step, Sin moved
towards the goal. It was at this point that young Atta, without any warning, his vocal cords
prompted by God knows what pressure of the clot upon his brain, sat bolt upright in his bed,
giving his mother the fright of her life, and screamed at the top of his voice: Thief! Thief!
Thief!
It seems probable that his poor mind had been dwelling, in these last moments, upon his own
father, but it is impossible to be certain, because having uttered these three emphatic words the
young man fell back on his pillow and died. At once his mother set up a screeching and a
wailing and a keening and a howling so ear-splittingly intense as to complete the work which
Attas cry had begun that is, her laments penetrated the walls of her husbands bedroom and
brought Hashim wide awake.
Sheikh Sin was just deciding whether to dive beneath the bed or brain the moneylender good

and proper when Hashim grabbed the tiger-striped swordstick which always stood propped up
in a corner beside his bed, and rushed from the room without so much as noticing the burglar
who stood on the opposite side of the bed in the darkness. Sin stooped quickly and removed the
phial containing the Prophets hair from its hiding-place.
Meanwhile Hashim had erupted into the corridor, having unsheathed the sword inside his stick;
he was waving the blade about dementedly with his right hand and shaking the stick with his
left. Now a shadow came rushing towards him through the midnight darkness of the
passageway and, in his somnolent anger, the moneylender thrust his sword fatally through its
heart. Turning up the light, he found that he had murdered his daughter, and under the dire
influence of this accident he found himself so persecuted by remorse that he turned the sword
upon himself, fell upon it and so extinguished his life. His wife, the sole surviving member of
the family, was driven mad by the general carnage and had to be committed to an asylum for
the insane by her brother, the citys Commissioner of Police.
Sheikh Sin had quickly understood that the plan had gone awry: abandoning the dream of the
jewel-boxes when he was but a few yards from its fulfilment, he climbed out of Hashims
window and made his escape during the awful events described above. Reaching home before
dawn, he woke his wife and confessed his failure: it would be necessary, he said, for him to
vanish for a while. Her blind eyes never opened until he had gone.
The noise in the Hashim household had roused their servants and even awakened the nightwatchman, who had been fast asleep as usual on his charpoy by the gate; the police were
alerted and the Commissioner himself informed. When he heard of Humas death, the mournful
officer opened and read the sealed letter which his niece had given him, and instantly led a
large detachment of armed men into the light-repellent gullies of the most wretched and
disreputable part of the city. The tongue of a malicious cat-burglar named Humas fellow
conspirator; the finger of an ambitious bank-robber pointed at the house in which he lay
concealed; and although Sin managed to crawl through a hatch in the attic and attempt a rooftop escape, a bullet from the Commissioners own rifle penetrated his stomach and brought him
crashing messily to the ground at the feet of the enraged uncle. From the dead mans ragged
pockets rolled a phial of tinted glass, cased in filigree silver.
The recovery of the Prophets hair was announced at once on All-India Radio. One month later,
the valleys holiest men assembled at the Hazratbal mosque and formally authenticated the
relic. It sits to this day in a closely-guarded vault by the shores of the loveliest of lakes in the
heart of the valley which is closer than any other place on earth to Paradise.
But before its story can properly be concluded, it is necessary to record that when the four sons
of the dead Sheikh awoke on that morning of his death, having unwittingly spent a few minutes
under the same roof as the holy hair, they found that a miracle had occurred, that they were all
sound of limb and strong of wind, as whole as they might have been if their father had not
thought to smash their legs in the first hours of their lives. They were, all four of them, very
properly furious, because this miracle had reduced their earning powers by 75 per cent, at the
most conservative estimate: so they were ruined men.
Only the Sheikhs widow had some reason for feeling grateful, because although her husband
was dead she had regained her sight, so that it was possible for her to spend her last days
gazing once more upon the beauties of the valley of Kashmir.