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 again
12. 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
A nightmarish leopard 272 .4
Conventional use
Nightmare is a bad dream and
leopard a hunting big-cat
Jumping and streaming 272.5
Jumping is an up and down
movement made by humans,
streaming an uncontrolled
motion of liquid.
Effect here
Nightmarish suggests a state
like a bad dream, though awake
– the leopard is the focus of the
nightmare. Ill-omen and threat
generated.
The use of jumping and
streaming suggests the power
of the rain. The fields are said
to be jumping because as the
Smouldered the town 272.7
To smoulder is to burn slowly
without flame.
Crippled 272.8
Crippled suggests the loss of
the ability to use ones limbs.
Thickening 272.9
Thickening suggests a growth in
size of a solid object
Sheet lead 272.9
Sheet lead might be used to
cover a roof and is a strong
barrier against inclement
weather.
Black as iron
Iron is a metal found naturally
in the ground
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.
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.
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.
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.
The rain is not just hard, it is
thickening as it carries greater
bulk to attack the man.
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.
The trees are no longer seen as
natural, but as metallic trees of
a dark and sinister colour.
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.