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.

Tasks:

Storyboard to find key events for summary.

1. Man, collar up in driving rain on hillside. Nature is dominant and man is not significant here – bored and frustrated.

2. First view of “thin, black horse”. Use the similes of ill-omen.3. Man finds shelter through “barricade of brambles” and the ground sucking at his feet.4. Second view of Horse -“watching him”.5. Horse attack – detail in description.6. Horse: “tall as a statue” watching him. NB his state of mind.7. Horse attack with onomatopoeia.8. Finds stones as weapons. Note comparison with eggs.9. Horse attack 3, man fights back. Note PF in passage.10. Horse attack and hit with stones under “superior guidance”11. Horse cat-like pain response –domesticity. Man becomes dominant again12. Closing image – man in barn. Ashamed and in pain. Other images?

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. Specific language chosen for effect throughout:

On pp272-273, find language designed to heighten the sense of threat or danger.

Word Conventional use Effect hereA nightmarish leopard 272 .4 Nightmare is a bad dream and

leopard a hunting big-catNightmarish suggests a state like a bad dream, though awake – the leopard is the focus of the nightmare. Ill-omen and threat generated.

Jumping and streaming 272.5 Jumping is an up and down movement made by humans, streaming an uncontrolled motion of liquid.

The use of jumping and streaming suggests the power of the rain. The fields are said to be jumping because as the

rain hits the ground it seems to cause it to jump as it splashes upward. There is so much rain that the fields seem to be turning to water.

Smouldered the town 272.7 To smoulder is to burn slowly without flame.

The town smoulders as it seems to steam – maybe smoke from the chimneys- but the image is, therefore one of destruction and defeat. A town might smoulder after it has been destroyed in a siege. A sense of threat is maintained.

Crippled 272.8 Crippled suggests the loss of the ability to use ones limbs.

The trees are personified as broken humans here. They will provide no real protection therefore and suggest that the same fate might befall the Man.

Thickening 272.9 Thickening suggests a growth in size of a solid object

The rain is not just hard, it is thickening as it carries greater bulk to attack the man.

Sheet lead 272.9 Sheet lead might be used to cover a roof and is a strong barrier against inclement weather.

Sheet lead is malleable and the metaphor equates his suit with lead because it seems to have formed tightly to his physique and is still keeping out the rain although it has become heavy and cold. Since lead is also poisonous this could be seen as a threatening image.

Black as iron Iron is a metal found naturally in the ground

The trees are no longer seen as natural, but as metallic trees of a dark and sinister colour.

The blue shoal of the town A shoal is a sandbar that extends into the sea. It is often made up from deposited pebbles and sand.

The town as a metaphorical shoal suggests a place of safety if the man is said to be in the sea – “the hill was shaped like a wave”. The nautical metaphor reinforces the sense of danger the man is feeling.

3. 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”.

4. Free Indirect Speech is used on 274.6 as the rhetorical questions suggest the man’s own thoughts.

5. 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.

6. 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.

Story: A man is pursued by a horse during a rain storm. He throws stones at it and drives it off before he finds shelter at a farm. As a bare outline it seems so easy. The violence of the language and the vivid depiction of the natural elements, as opposed to the human who was once a part of nature but who after 12 years is now merely bored, suggests a central theme. Mankind has lost touch with nature and needs to return to a state of semi savagery in order to reclaim the ascendancy over it. Sadly, this ascendancy must result in the hurting of nature. At the end of the story there is no triumph, rather the man is left dejected “as if some important part has been cut out of his brain”. This is deliberately ambiguous. He may be recognising his place in nature and mourning the loss of the ability to respond to nature or he may be returning to the de-sensitized being that started the story. Nature imagery abounds and nature is certainly cruel – even the stones are likened to goose eggs and therefore carry a weight because of this image. Eggs symbolise fertility and fragility of life. Here they are weapons.