Roe Deer Ted Hughes 5 Minute Starter Skim and Scan the information from ‘The British Deer Society’,that is on the board. Write three questions about the roe deer, based on the information that you have read. If you are asked, share your questions with the class and see how quickly they can find the information that answers your questions. to the poem being read. the poem to yourself the poem to the person sitting next to you. Can you work out what ‘the story’ of the poem is? What is going on? are some questions you can try and answer if you don’t know where to start summarising the poem: What is the weather like? What time of day is it? What does the speaker see? What happens to what the speaker sees? How did you do? In the dawn, on the snowiest day of the year, the speaker remembers two deer appearing in the middle of the road, like they had materialised from another world. The deer are very still as if waiting for the speaker to say a magic word. For a moment the speaker feels this is like a boundary to another world and the deer have come to take him with them. The deer run away towards a dark wood and vanish into the snow. Soon, the snow covers all their tracks. Poetry Lessons - ● Understand the ‘plot’ of the poem. ● Analyse and annotate the poem. ● Complete an essay style question about the poem. ● Fill in a poetry revision grid. HOMEWORK: COMPLETE A STORYBOARD, SHOWING THE PLOT OF THE POEM. USE QUOTATIONS AND IMAGES. In the dawn’s early light, in the biggest snow of the year Two blue-dark deer stood in the road, alerted. Use of anaphora ‘In the’ acts like a drum roll Hughes is announcing something spectacular is to come. So the feeling, the tone, Hughes wants to transmit the reader at the start of this poem - is a tone of anticipation of something special about to happen. Assonance is used extensively in the opening lines of this poem. Here a long ‘oo’ sound is repeated ‘two’ and ‘blue’ and a long ‘ee’ sound ‘year’ and ‘deer’ this gives a sense of a stopped moment in time where Hughes sees the deer and they see him. It makes the moment seem intense, out of the realms of normal time, like a spell being cast. assonance The repetition of similar vowel sound in words which are placed close together. This can create a kind of rhythm or half-rhyme which make the words seem more poetic or lyrical, creating mood or atmosphere. They had happened into my dimension The moment I was arriving just there. Hughes using enjambment to show how time seems to slow down or stop completely - he is hypnotised by the deers. The lines run into each other, almost like a spell being cast that Hughes does not want to break. Hughes grew up in the countryside in Yorkshire and it seems this encounter with deer is something that really happened to him. Hughes was fascinated with nature and this mysterious encounter - this ‘moment’ has endured because he has written it down. In a way this moment exists like the thing that Hughes experienced on the day he saw the deer - the poem is like a gateway, a glimpse into the universe of the deer for us: like this moment is something we step into and exists when we read the poem. The curtain to the deer’s universe is lifted. They planted their 2 or 3 years of secret deerhood Clear on my snow screen vision of the abnormal ‘Clear on my snow screen vision’ appears to be a paradox. Hughes sees the outline of the deers, he thinks clearly, but his vision is hindered by ‘snow screen’ meaning the snow is falling heavily: so he cannot actually make out the deer clearly. The snow screen adds to the sense of mystery - he cannot see the deer clearly: it is like the white noise on an old TV. Hughes alludes to the fact that the deers are like a secret order, like the Knights Templar: they have a secret code they live by and you can only know it if you are one of them. And hesitated in the all-way disintegration And stared at me. And so for some lasting seconds I could think the deer were waiting for me Sibilance: ‘some lasting seconds’ the repetition of the ‘s’ sound gives a sense of hush - silence. We whisper the words as we are aware, as Hughes is, any loud sound could destroy the moment, by frightening the deer. To remember the password and sign This links back to the idea of ‘secret deer hood’ Many secret orders have secret handshakes, symbols and signs to recognise each by. Here Hughes feels like the deer are giving him a chance to say the right password and he will be able to go with the deer. I think this a relatable moment - how many times after an encounter or event have you not been able to say the right thing and the moment was lost? ‘all - way disintegration’ sounds like awkward phrasing, it sounds like Hughes cannot express in words what is happening. The hyphen between all-way breaks up the phrase too. But actually this clevering shows what is happening: Hughes’ vision seems to be breaking down, perhaps the snow has got much heavier and he can’t see much and is becoming disorientated, trying to focus on the deer. That the curtain had blown aside for a moment And there where the trees were no longer trees, nor the road a road This poem is unmistakably set in the English countryside at dawn, ‘tree-dark’ and ‘snow’(y). Remember Ted Hughes was raised in the countryside in West Yorkshire. Clearly, this poem is autobiographical. At this point in the poem the trees and the road seem to transform for a second as if Hughes has stumbled on a gateway to a parallel universe where the ‘trees were no longer trees.’ The road is also mentioned as Hughes is trying to make us aware how we humans butt up against nature and we don’t seem to see it. Further to this, how without us realising nature could be a doorway to another world. In this poem Hughes is like a Shaman - for a second the deer appear to have opened a gateway to him and he is inhabiting another reality. The deer had come for me. Then they ducked thru the hedge, and upright they rode their legs Away downhill over snow-lonely field The enjambment here works in the opposite way to how it was used earlier. Here the enjambment echoes the deers’ swift movement and gives a sense of Hughes tracking them with his eyes as they run away. The poem is made up of 11 stanzas, most are unrhymed couplets (perhaps representing the two deer) - apart from this line ‘The deer had come for me’. This line is on its own to show Hughes’ surprise and sudden realisation that he feels he has been picked out by the deer to travel with them to another magical, deer-filled dimension which would be heart stopping and is why this line is on its own. For a moment he is in a liminal space with the deer and is afraid he cannot hold it. And he doesn’t because in the next line the deer are running away. Towards tree-dark–finally Seeming to eddy and glide and fly away up Into the boil of big flakes. The snow took them and soon their nearby hoofprints as well. The enjambment shows how smoothly and quickly the deer seem to disappear back into their own world. It is almost like they dissolve into the snow - not a trace left behind. ‘Boil of big flakes’. The word boil is interesting, showing as the deer run away the snow seems to intensify and looks like fast boiling water. The repetition of the ‘b’ sound echoes the large balloon like flakes. The word boil might also show some of Hughes’ frustration at the moment passing. Revising its dawn inspiration Back to the ordinary After the excitement and wonder of seeing the deer we are left with a philosophical and reflective tone. Hughes comments the moment is quickly gone and the snow ‘revising its dawn inspiration’ falls over the footprints of the deer - and it is like it never happened. We are back to just snow ‘back to the ordinary’. However, Hughes wrote the poem perhaps to remind us of the special and extraordinary moments that can happen in life and that the mystery of life is so much bigger than we can conceive and sometimes we can see beyond the ‘curtain’ to something else. Now you have completed your annotations, use some of them to fill in your revision grid. Remember to write in note form. ‘Deep’ is developing your point explaining the meaning of words in your quote and showing why the poet has selected those particular words - how do they want the reader to feel? ‘Shallow’ means a basic point like naming a language device, or the rhyme scheme. ‘Quote’ means words from your text you are using to illustrate your point - short phrases or single words are best to show the examiner you really understand what you have read. ‘Profound’ is developing a point to the fullest extent. You might make interesting comments about links to context, to other literature or how we live today. Respond to this exam style question by writing an essay: Use your revision grid to help you. How does Hughes present nature as mysterious and magical in Roe Deer? Remember to write about language, context, structure, voice and tone. Remember to address the question throughout the essay. Twist your revision notes to suit the question. You have 45 minutes to complete this task. Extension Work - Creative Challenge Write a 300-500 word story that begins with the line: If only I had known what to say.
