Ted Hughes - Wind: a Metaphorical Reading

A metaphorical reading of Wind by Ted Hughes

Wind, one of Ted Hughes most foreboding poems, shows an entirely different aspect to writing about nature. Unlike many other poems such as John Clare’s ‘A morning breeze’, ‘Wind’ does not concern itself with the beauty and serenity of a clement breeze, but with the relentless strength and power of nature, most likely known to him from life on the moors of the Pennines.

Hughes opens the poem with the oceanic metaphor of a house being “far out at sea all night”, immediately creating stormy imagery and with it, a sense of instability, isolation and danger, as a house far out at sea would have minimal chances of survival. Like terrified, panicked animals, the woods are “crashing through darkness” and the winds “stampeding the fields”. Such language, commonly associated with violent, devastating movement, is used by Hughes to convey the sheer danger that lies with the apparent storm - which is symbolic of the power of nature - as a result of its uncontrollable force. The use of such language also creates the impression that the storm (which Hughes has excellently made clear to be a presence in the poem through metaphor in the very first lines) has its own life force, strengthening the sense of danger and power in nature. In addition to this, we also see the title of the poem already coming into effect, as the house appears to face inexhaustible pounding from wind as a boat would in a turbulent sea “wind stampeding the fields under the window floundering back”.

The following stanza, a witness to the winds legacy, enforces the sense of nature as extremely powerful as “the hills had new places” showing that the ultimate measure of the winds potency is that it can transmute factors of our surroundings which we would normally imagine to be reassuringly permanent.  We are also brought to see nature as an uncontrollable violent force through metaphor, with the sky, although temporarily tranquil, described to be wielding a...