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  • Essay / Comparative analysis of the poems "The Horses" and "The Fox of Thought"

    In Hughes's poetry, "racial memory, animal instinct, and poetic imagination all blend with exact sensuality" - Seamus HeaneySay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned'?Get Original Essay 'The Horses' and 'The Thought Fox' are two of Hughes' most powerful symbolic poems, introducing the author's in-depth examination of the rational. actions of humans compared to the instinctive actions of animals. It is true that the dominant impression these poems leave on the reader is that of the vigor and often violent energies of the non-human world and the inner world of man's own emotions. the poems deal with two different animals with various important symbolic implications and connotations. It is very interesting to note that Hughes chose a Fox to illustrate his idea of ​​creativity. The fox is a cunning animal, very mischievous, very slippery, which does not allow itself to be trapped or caught easily. Being a symbol of deception and intelligence, he always tried to fool hunters and other animals. It's somewhat subtle and elusive. Very cleverly, this image of Fox alludes to the process of coming up with an idea or having a sudden and interesting thought or more precisely, the art of creating poetry which is also elusive and slippery in nature. It's as if, once an idea is conceived, the only way to preserve it is to capture it on a piece of paper, otherwise there is a serious risk that it will be slippery enough (exactly like a fox) to sneak out of the mind. On the other hand, the horses in “Horses” are symbols of natural energy, power and pro-creative power. The first lines of both poems use the personal pronoun “I” which refers to the narrator. The setting of the two poems is indicated in the first lines which are “wood” in “The Horses” and “forest” in “The Thought Fox”. We find another striking similarity between the strange timings mentioned in the two poems. for example, "an hour before dawn" in "The Horses" and "midnight" in "The Thought Fox". We have very strong vibrations of an imminent threat at the very beginning of the poems where on the one hand the unfathomable fear of "A bad air" and an "icy calm" make us freeze with worry, the danger that "Something 'other' or 'alive' in the other poem tightens the strings of our mind even more. We are shaken from the beginning of the poems, our senses all seem at work and we already seem surprised by the underlying theme, the tone and the poet's choice of words. From start to finish, both poems have a fitting sequence that takes readers along like a roller coaster ride. As in “The Thought-Fox,” we first find the solitary narrator with a blank page, who may struggle to scribble something on it even if the page remains blank. This leads to the emergence of a vague figure in the next stanza, which takes on a certain formation and is seen as the figure of a fox. It then takes a suitable shape and finally, at the end, the page is printed and the creation is complete. On the other hand, we also see a sequence in “The Horses”. The poet begins as a journey during which the narrator comes across horses that “make no noise.” He moves away from these horses and describes the outside world and his surroundings with the same brilliance with which he described horses. We see him return to the horses at the end and the journey is over. It seems that both poems are treated as a very powerful camera lens that shows nearby objects first,.