Ted Hughes Wind

Ted Hughes’s poem, “Wind”, describes the impact and strength nature has over human beings. The poem is written in first person, which emphasizes the idea of a personal experience and suggests that the speaker of the poem is Hughes. The poem is situated away from the cities, presumably in the countryside or in a very isolated place, this can be supported by the use of words like “fields” and “hills”. The setting of the poem is in autumn since the weather is described as being cold and grim. The theme can be interpreted as the fragility of humans when faced against nature and that we aren’t able to control or predict it as we think we are. In Hughes’s piece the mood changes. The poem begins with isolation and desolation, whilst at the end we can feel the fear and anxiety of the narrator. Through the six-stanza poem the sounds created, the structure, the literary devices and diction all develop the idea of fragility of humans when faced with the ferocity of the four elements.
The sound of the poem is very important in order to fully depict the theme. This is because Hughes decided to use cacophony and alliterations all the way through “Wind” to portray the power of the wind hitting humanity. The use of cacophony in the third verse, “Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes” the author really accentuates the strength of the storm. Also through the use of hard and harsh sounds like [b], which is a voiced plosive sound, and [k] which is a guttural sound. An excellent example to show an alliteration that has both the [b] and [k] sounds is: “A black back gull bent like an iron bar slowly”. The alliterations highlight once again the power of the wind hitting on the house. The simile on the other hand also portrays the strengths of the gale.
Structure has a very important role in the poem as it compares the poem to the actual qualities of wind. Both the punctuation and the amount of syllables in each line reflect the wind. On the one hand the