Ted Hughes Essay

343 Words2 Pages
'The Thought Fox' An analysis of ‘The thought Fox’ exploring Ted Hughes presentation of his ideas. Ted Hughes poem ‘The thought fox’ uses a fox as a metaphor for writing the poem. In the first stanza it describes his thought processes and a description of his visual surroundings. The beginning of the poem is vague, but then he achieves an area of creative inspiration. ‘Through the window I see no star’ this portrays the image of a blank page. The second and third lines of the second stanza are a paradox, ‘something more near, though deeper within darkness’..The words near and deeper emphasise this. Hughes uses the fox’s physical features to put across his ideas to the reader ‘cold, delicately as the dark snow’ this line is delayed to the next line. ‘A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf’ the physical reality is that the fox’s nose is cold and damp. This is an example of enjambment being used to the poets advantage. ‘Two eyes serve a moment’ Hughes has carried on with the idea, it’s ambiguous. The repetition and monosyllabic tone of ‘that now and again now, and now and now’ gives it a sense of energy and urgency which matches the speed of the animal. He also uses alliteration which binds together the words. Hughes also uses several different senses using hearing, sight and touch at the beginning and eventually using smell near the end. ‘Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox’. This line particularly stands out to the reader due to in the case of most people, being familiar to the smell of a fox is not common. It then goes onto say ‘it enters the dark hole of the head’ ‘dark hole’ is in comparison to a fox’s home very similar. The portrait of the real fox is so convincing, it’s almost surprising when at the end of the poem when it enters not its home, but a hole in your head, it’s a thought fox but the poem ends with ‘the page is
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