The Rain Horse by Ted Hughes: An Analysis
The Rain Horse – Ted Hughes.
Hughes in Man/Nature clash. Man is not “recognised” by nature and has become an outsider. Nature is personified and given strong emotional attributes. Horse is powerful, male, aggressive, free. Man is muddy and weak until he rediscovers the aggression of an earlier, savage age. Drives off horse and reaches safety though he is aware of his weakness.
Literary devices:
1. Pathetic fallacy: Uses rain as a sign of the hostility of nature. Other images that arise here are the “barricade” of thorns and the fact that the ground seems to deliberately impede his running. Note the sky is at its darkest for the final attack and defence. The rain will attack him –“plastering beat … on his bare skull” and nature will be personified to cause him pain – “whipped by oak twigs”. Ending under cover of roof suggests that man can tame nature but not subdue it.
2. Personification is used throughout the story to give human attributes to the horse and to nature. The horse can decide to watch the man as though thinking about the plan of attack. More clearly, nature is personified as a violent attacker – “this land no longer recognised him”, “the ankle deep clay dragged at him”.
3. Free Indirect Speech is used on 274.6 as the rhetorical questions suggest the man’s own thoughts.
4. The overall diction is highly poetic. Onomatopoeia is common (“spattering whack”) as is alliteration: “Like Lightening his Legs…” The use of compound adjectives and violent lexis all help to deliver a highly aggressive and virile story.
5. Variation of sentence length. Short sentences are used to state fact in a powerful manner and at times to suggest the FIS of the protagonist.
Hughes in Man/Nature clash. Man is not “recognised” by nature and has become an outsider. Nature is personified and given strong emotional attributes. Horse is powerful, male, aggressive, free. Man is muddy and weak until he rediscovers the aggression of an earlier, savage age. Drives off horse and reaches safety though he is aware of his weakness.
Literary devices:
1. Pathetic fallacy: Uses rain as a sign of the hostility of nature. Other images that arise here are the “barricade” of thorns and the fact that the ground seems to deliberately impede his running. Note the sky is at its darkest for the final attack and defence. The rain will attack him –“plastering beat … on his bare skull” and nature will be personified to cause him pain – “whipped by oak twigs”. Ending under cover of roof suggests that man can tame nature but not subdue it.
2. Personification is used throughout the story to give human attributes to the horse and to nature. The horse can decide to watch the man as though thinking about the plan of attack. More clearly, nature is personified as a violent attacker – “this land no longer recognised him”, “the ankle deep clay dragged at him”.
3. Free Indirect Speech is used on 274.6 as the rhetorical questions suggest the man’s own thoughts.
4. The overall diction is highly poetic. Onomatopoeia is common (“spattering whack”) as is alliteration: “Like Lightening his Legs…” The use of compound adjectives and violent lexis all help to deliver a highly aggressive and virile story.
5. Variation of sentence length. Short sentences are used to state fact in a powerful manner and at times to suggest the FIS of the protagonist.