UNVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE CATAMARCA FACULTAD DE HUMANIDADES DEPARTAMENTO DE INGLS

Docente: Lucia Fernandez Alumna: Mara Celeste Morales Carrera: Licenciatura en Ingls M.U.N: 1430 Curso: Quinto Ao Ciclo Acadmico: 2012

LITERATURA DEL HABLA INGLESA DESPUES DE LA SEGUNDA GUERRA MUNDIAL

CROW AS A MIRROR OF HUMANKIND ON THE BLACK BEAST To read Ted Hughess poetry is to enter in a world dominated by nature, especially by animals. In his poems, he describes not only just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state, their wildness, their quiddity, and their single and unique characteristics. Moreover, the poet places his animals in the principal role of his works and frames them with mythology and symbolism to show something else. This paper presents how the crow mirrors humankind in Ted Hughes The Black Beast (1970) and how he uses the animals characteristics to show that man destroys everything in an attempt to destroy the beast. First, it is necessary to deal with two concepts mythology and symbolism which will inevitably lead to the ideas of myths, symbols and their persistence through years as well as their easiness for being understood by people. This theoretical framework is appropriate to establish the importance of using mythology, and the symbolism that an animal like the crow has behind it. By applying the mythological approach and symbolism in the analysis of the poem, it will drive to the idea of considering the crow as a mirror of men. A mythological approach to literature assumes that there is a collection of symbols, images, characters, and motifs that evokes basically the same response in all people. It emphasizes the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works. Combining the
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insights from anthropology, psychology, history and comparative religion, mythological criticism explores the artists common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and ages. According to the psychologist Carl Jung, all individuals share a collective unconscious, a set of archetypes common to the human race, existing below each persons conscious mind, often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood. In addition, it is fundamental that the archetypes result in images that are often similar in a variety of literary works as in legends, dreams and even social behavior patterns. The similarities of the archetypes in these demonstrations reflect a set of universal standards, primitive and elemental whose effective embodiment in a literary work evokes a profound response from the reader. For Northrop Frye (Atkins and Morrow, 1989), the term invokes an image that is constantly repeated in literature to be recognized. One of the aims of studying literature from a mythological approach is to assess the continuity of forms and images across different cultures and times. The myth is a belief accepted by a group, especially if it works as the basis of existing institutions or practices. It has also been understood as a story or set of narrative elements in which they are expressed and implicitly symbolize certain deeper aspects of human existence. Indeed, the myth is the vehicle not aware of meanings attached to the inner nature of the universe and of human life is its intimate relationship with the ritual and its present operating results from its repetition in worship or in world history or of man. According to ethnology, a myth is a form of behavior and a mythical participation of a whole society in certain symbols. This close relationship between myth and society undoubtedly allows obtaining insights into the nature of human behavior. Because of the common misconception and misuse of the term, myths are merely primitive fictions, illusions, or opinions based upon false reasoning. Actually, mythology encompasses more than grade school stories about the Greeks and Romans or clever fables invented for the amusement of children. Myth is fundamental, the dramatic representation of our deepest instinctual life, of a primary awareness of man in the universe, capable of many configurations, upon which all particular opinions and attitudes depend (Guerin, 2005). Similarly, a symbol is the use of a concrete object, person or situation that represents an abstract idea, something in addition to its literal meaning. Conventional or traditional literary
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symbols work in much the same way, and because they have a previously agreed upon meaning, they can be used to suggest ideas more universal than the physical aspect itself. A symbol may appear in a work of literature in a number of different ways to suggest a number of different things. For example, a crow would mean death, destruction and it often plays prophetic roles or function as a conductor of the soul. Thus, symbolism, as a type and movement in poetry, emphasizes non structured internalized poetry that, for lack of better words, describes thoughts and feelings in a disconnected way and leaves aside logic, formal structure, and descriptive reality. Undoubtedly, Ted Hughes is considered the most striking figure that has emerged among the British poets since World War II and his poetry signals a dramatic departure from the prevailing modes of the period. The stereotypical poem of the time has been determined not to risk too much, politely domestic in its subject matter, understated and mildly ironic in style. By contrast, Hughes uses a language of nearly Shakespearean resonance to explore themes which are mythic and elemental. Hughes writes: Obviously many poems take myths as their subject matter, or make an image of a subjective event, without earning the description visionary, let alone mythic. It is only when the image opens inwardly towards what we recognize as a firsthand as if religious experience, or mythical revelation, that we call it visionary, and when personalities or creatures are involved, we call it mythic. (Keith Sagar, 2000) Moreover, the poet is not only concerned to retell old myths, or to mythologize contemporary life. His concern is to treat certain experiences as though for the first time and as the first poet who employs them, the maker of their myths. Therefore, his myths do not ordinarily invoke old names from vanished pantheons, but reveal intrinsic patterns of actions, of realization, which the old myths, too, expressed. This skillful process of mythologizing experience makes Hughes the best younger British poet. The poetry of Ted Hughes has always focused from a Eurocentric point of view, especially in regard to mythology which has inspired him to develop his poetry. It seems certain that Ted Hughes used various Western cultural sources, from Greek mythology to the JudeoChristian, cultural sources of the American continent, from legends to short stories Chilean Eskimos, but also employed Eastern mythologies, very little studied, such as those from the
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Sufism or Buddhism. He also works with mythology, kabbalistic and hermetic which substitute religion. Sometimes the poet begins using religion as when he deconstructs the biblical idea of the source to write Crow (1970). But his last intention is to talk of human beings, men and women, as individuals who wish to attain the status of gods and, for that, they need the mythology rather than religion. In his works, man is treated as carrying a vital energy and aggressive enthusiasm made aware of their potential but also its limitations as a person. The contents of his poetry always present different conceptions of the person. On the one hand, sees man and woman as incapable of possessing spiritual and therefore a direction and meaning of life. This situation has been reached due to the vacuum that, little by little, has left Christianity, to allow, for example, two major wars in the twentieth century. On the other, the poet is aware that the spirituality of man and modern woman lacks strength, as it is restricted by the sterility of modern urban society. It is clear that the rural landscape of Hughess youth in Yorkshire and his love for animals also exert an influence on his work. For critics, the poet uses animals in his poems instead of man to show that man denies his animal nature, but at the same time that very nature, when it gets out of hand, makes him bestial and hateful and can also kill him. Crow is a collection of poems based around the character and Hughes personal symbol crow. It is said that he has created one of the most powerful mythic presences in contemporary poetry and a mythical symbol through which he expresses his powerful emotions and complex ideas. Hughes choice of crow as his personal symbol is quite interesting because in folk mythology the crow is an animal figure predominantly associated with the ideas of death and guilt. He is black, ugly, and solitary, almost indestructible, the most intelligent, the most omnivorous and the least musical of all birds. He is the embodiment of boldness, intelligence, adaptability to change and twisted vitality. Some of these attitudes are adverted to in Ted Hughes 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 In the particular case of Hughes' mythology of Crow, it is thought that the poems are deeply rooted in many legends. Within it are several accounts of the creation of Crow but the
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most central is that God, having created the world, has a recurring nightmare. A huge hand comes from deep space, takes him by the throat and drags him through the space, ploughs the earth with him, and then throws him back into heaven in a cold sweat. The nightmare appears to be independent of the creation, and God cannot understand it. The nightmare is full of mockery of the creation, especially of man. God challenges the nightmare to do it better. This is just what the nightmare has been waiting for and creates a Crow. God tests the Crow by putting him through a series of difficult trials but Crow survives to them all. Meanwhile Crow interferes in God's activities, sometimes trying to learn or help or sometimes in open rebellion. Maybe because of his ambition to become a man, but he never quite makes it. To sum up, the whole myth of the collection is to be told as an epic folk-tale in prose with songs by and about Crow. Hughes is doubtful whether he will ever complete this project and in what form it will ultimately be published. Very few of the poems in Crow demand knowledge of the mythic framework, or why he chooses a crow as his protagonist. The prevalence of ravens and crows in folklore derives largely from the real bird's characteristics. The crow is mythological in the sense that he is a complete yet fantastic being, at once animal and human. The black bird of Hughes's title is emblematic, the force remaining in the universe once it has been destroyed by atomic ash or industrial pollution. By exploring the animal forces and energies, Hughes probably attempts to seek realignment with the unknown forces governing the universe. One of the poems of the Crow collection is The Black Beast. Just as in the other poems he takes advantage of an animal like a crow to explore the horrors of life in the current world. In the poem, the crow is described like an owl (Ted Hughes, 1970: l 2) or something evil as he swiveled his head (Ted Hughes, 1970: l 2). Then, the animal performs mans actions such as hid in his bed (Ted Hughes, 1970: l 4), sat in his chair (Ted Hughes, 1970: l 6), shouted after midnight (Ted Hughes, 1970: l 8), kill his brother (Ted Hughes, 1970: l 1). In The Black Beast a question is repeated Where is the Black Beast (Ted Hughes, 1970: l 1, 3, 5) because the crow looks for the beast and tries to fight it, and at the end, the final lines crow flailed immensely through the vacuum, he screeched after the disappearing stars Where is it? Where is the Black Beast? (Ted Hughes, 1970: l 23-25) which would mean that the crow has become the evil himself.

According to critics, Ted Hughes persona of the poem engages in furious battle with men, God, society, nature, the cosmos, and himself. Critics consider that the poet insists in describing the universe as empty of all values except the individual desire to survive. To them, crow is the beast of a very modern apocalypse; additionally, they think that the author quests for terror and the center of terror affords him the means by which to defend himself against it. It is also necessary to remember the hero or main character of a story is associated with bravery, nobility and greatness of soul but in many myths, epic and drama the so called heroes are in fact criminals against nature who should be viewed with horrors as exemplars of hubris. After considering mythology, symbolism, the poem, the character itself and certain critics, it is possible to state that the Crow might be seen as the shadow of human kind. He destroys everything around him in an attempt to destroy the "Black Beast" that the reader at least becomes aware that it is a blind search and is to be found nowhere but in himself. It is quite possible that humanity is the only specie, which is its own worst enemy and predator. Man is the criminal of his own life since in the poem, the crime against nature and humankind looms much larger than ever before, and is no longer a crime committed by them but by all. Undoubtedly, the greatest threats to humankind come from people and the World Wars would have been the best examples to Hughes. Though, humans also have the capacity to recognize their own criminality and do something about it. Moreover, the use of actions, that only man can perform, are good clues for thinking the crow as a symbol of men. Crow is everyman who will not acknowledge that everything he most hates and fears is within himself. As well as, the black bird shares much of the faults and follies of man. Crow's world is unredeemable. God made the redeemer as a defeatist act of submission to Crow. What Hughes is seeking to communicate is a vision of the wrongness of things, of humanity seeking to survive and live without a purpose, destroying the world and themselves. In the previous analysis, it has been clearly exposed that Ted Hughes frames his poems with mythology and symbolism. He takes the crow as a personal symbol because of his natural characteristics and all the background that crows have gathered in their long existence, to mirror everyman. The poet effectively portrays an unpleasant mirror of humanity through the crow, who often has animal-like behaviour, is arrogant, incapable of love but for himself, does terrible things and is capable of unspeakable acts of cruelty and
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heartlessness. Similar to the crow, a human being looks for the black beast that apparently represents the origins of all his fear and doubt, failing to see the irony of his quest.