Type a 500 word critical commentary in response to 'Hawk in the Rain'.
Hawk in the rain is a biting, eloquent and ultimately disturbing poem, presenting nature as a deadly and ruthless force, as a critic once said, it never rains with Hughes, it pours. Hughes leaves readers questioning the extent of the darkness within his own mind. The graphic nature of the poem is rooted through use of constant harsh lexis and adverbs. Throughout the poem Hughes establishes the viscious essence of his imagery by continually referencing death and using a repetitive structure to further emphasise the bitter conditions, establishing a scene of chaos and isolation.
Immediately we are greeted by death, in the first line of the poem: ‘I drown in the drumming ploughland.’ This reference to drowning is able to portray a sudden sense of suffering, further implicated with the use of alliteration, ‘drown’ ‘drumming’ ‘drag’. The alliteration also creates a steady pace which could be representive of the constant, hammering rain, In the same stanza Hughes goes on to describe a ‘dogged grave’, this reference to death yet again creates a sense of foreboding, and inflicts the constancy and hopelessness of the narrator’s suffering, so much that he is trapped in his own grave.
Hawk in the Rain is ultimately a poem portraying the brutality of nature, Hughes uses personification to allude to the power of nature and uses anthropomorphism to portray the violent and vicsious abuse faced by the rain. The hedges are ‘stubborn’ the wind is ‘banging’ and the shires are ‘ponderous’. The continual personification morphs nat...
