Module_C__Ted_Hughes_Essay

‘At the heart of representation are deliberate acts of selection and emphasis.’ ------------------------------------------------- Evaluate how effectively the texts you have studied demonstrate this in relation to conflicting perspectives. As one’s understanding of reality is by nature subjective, every text is merely a representation the author’s perspective through acts of selection and emphasis. Regarding personal and confessional poetry and diaries, the form of the text heavily impacts upon this process. The fatalism of Sylvia Plath, the impact of her father and the role of Ted Hughes are evident within Hughes’ Birthday Letters (1998), specifically The Shot (Shot) and The Minotaur (Minotaur), and when read in comparison to Plath’s own Journals, conflicting perspectives on the similar subject matter emerge. As stated by their daughter, Frieda Hughes, Plath “has been dissected, analysed, reinterpreted, reinvented, fictionalised, and in some cases completely fabricated” and to assess the works of the most intimate parties, one can hope to gain a more objective truth. Through the choice of Ted Hughes’ subject matter, Shot represents Plath as inevitably driving through her life, while literary techniques serve to emphasise the impact of her father and shape the perspective of Hughes. His selected bullet metaphor penetrates the entirety of the poem through imagery and word choice, creating a dehumanised Plath “undeflected. / … Trajectory perfect”. She “ricocheted / The length of your Alpha career / With the fury / Of a high velocity bullet”, positioning her career as the drive for her existence while the sentence’s slow rhythm strips away immediate emotion, emphasising Hughes’ retrospective, peripheral perspective. Through his selection of tone in the final, balanced stanzas of the poem, Hughes positions his audience to negatively receive Plath’s furious determination. The multiple caesura utilised in “Tossed you, cooling, one hand to the other” with the slowing pace of the poem culminating to his effort to save Plath, but only to grasp tangible remnants, “A wisp of your hair, your ring, your watch, your nightgown” delicately alluding to her demise through his melancholy, tender tone created through the even, empty lines. Plath’s “Daddy” is omnipresent behind the poem, the cause of her “infatuation, / That seemed to have been designed at birth”. Presenting himself as “vague as mist”, the simile emphasises that “your real target / Hid behind me” her father bookending the stanza illustrating Plath, underscoring his presence, while emphasising her impact, having “gone clean through” him. Thus, Plath’s nature, her father and Hughes are represented through the selection of form and subsequent choices of techniques to convey his perspective. Minotaur similarly depicts Plath’s nature, the role of Hughes and her father through the selection of an event and poetic techniques, which emphasise aspects essential to Hughes. Plath’s violent outburst and emotional nature are represented through Hughes’ deliberate use of second person and strong verbs, “you smashed” and “you swung that day”, the latter word choice portraying the event as unexceptional. This passionate event presents a new perspective of Plath exploring her destructive nature, which is alluded to in Shot. The mythical allusion selected by Hughes demonstrates her impact, “unravelled your marriage, / Left your children echoing / Like tunnels in a labyrinth” emphasising her absence as reflected in the hollow sound of the words, leaving only the trap of her lair. Akin to Shot, Minotaur holds Plath’s father responsible, and as each stanza delves deeper into Plath the final image of the “horned, bellowing / Grave of your rise father - / And your own corpse in it” positions the mammoth beast within the very centre of her psyche, driving her to death. While much of the poem describes Plath, her effect on Hughes strongly but subtly pervades it. The embodiment of the “mahogany table-top” with personal value, “my mother’s heirloom sideboard - / Mapped with the scars of my whole life” initiates the emphasis upon himself. The enjambment of “Demented by my being” to the subsequent anticlimactic sentence illustrates Hughes’ concealed emotions behind the dominance of Plath’s. Another intimate representation of Plath is portrayed within the confines of the poetic form; the acts of selection and emphasis through choice of techniques to illustrate an event in Plath’s life within the context of her fate. Sylvia Plath’s Journals provide an extremely personal representation of these issues, and through selection and position of subject matter combined with emphasis through deliberate or non-deliberate literary techniques shapes the tone and thus Plath’s perspective. Both Shot and Minotaur suggest Plath’s father as the key influence on her life, however a journal entry in 1959 emphasises Plath’s antagonism towards her Mother and her impact, starkly contrasting Hughes’ representation. Continual repetition of emotive language, “I hate her” and deliberately grotesque, unnerving imagery “she wants to crawl into my stomach and be my baby and ride along” represents the extent of Plath’s emotion. “I’d kill her, so I killed myself”, exemplifies the contrasting perspective of her “Daddy” the “God with the smoking gun”, having shot her to an inevitable death. Opposing Hughes’ image of this fatalism in Plath and her career, her Journals portray it as a slowly revealing necessity “More & more I realize how I must stop teaching and devote myself to writings” the strength of her word choice and sentence pace emphasising the increasing necessity with which this was felt. However, unintentional inclusion of events exposes, shaped by the form, their importance in Plath’s life. Supporting Hughes’ representation of inevitability, reminiscent of Shot, Plath’s hope and expectation is externalised in her “Park walk”, describing “first tulip cracked its green bud sheath & opened red silk and purple-black stamens to sun”, her ornate, considered tone reflecting the future she is driven to hold. While Hughes removes himself from the “trajectory” of Plath, she opposes this in aggressively attacking Hughes for shifting her personality from a “crazy perfectionist and promiscuous human-being-lover” to a “nasty, catty and malicious misanthrope” while utilising a similar metaphor describes herself “lucky to have been stabbed by him”, revealing that comparable acts of selection can create different representations of truth, as it is subject to human experience. This loving relationship existent between Plath and Hughes is evident in Plath stating “My husband supports me in soul, body and by feeding me bread and poems” utilising metonymy to describe all aspects of her life, contrasting to Hughes’ love which is shaped by his reminiscent, melancholy tone with destructive subject matter. Through the assessment of deliberate and unintentional acts of selection and emphasis, viable through the form of Plath’s diary, a different, more complex image of Plath and her relationship with Hughes emerges. Thus to read the representation Ted Hughes’ creates in Shot and Minotaur in contrast to Plath’s Journals, what materialises is a clear divergence in perspective. The conflict of the two intimate, valid texts lead one to gain a greater understanding of the truth as complex and shifting, which elicits a deep insight into the processes of selection and emphasis composers undergo to portray their experience. Word Count: 1,106