Ted Hughes, the thought fox, is an effective poem on both a literal and a symbolic level. Would you agree?

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Ted Hughes, the thought fox, is an effective poem on both a literal and a symbolic level. Would you agree?

The thought fox has often been acknowledge as one of the best masterpiece created by Ted Hughes. At the same time it is one of the most frequently anthologised of all Hughes’s poems. If you are familiar with the poetry of Ted Hughes, you will know that he uses animals not purely for their own sakes but as a vehicle for commenting on the human condition. As he was brought up in the Yorkshire countryside, he uses aspects of his experience there to develop his poetic themes. Just like the other masterpiece done by Ted Hughes, Hawk in the rain, the Thought Fox is also a poem which deals with the presence of an animal. At the most basis level of this poem, this animal which will be encompassed is outlined by Ted Hughes from the beginning, the title of the poem. The title of this poem, which is “the thought fox”, has inherently suggested the present of a fox. As to fully appreciate this poem, one must fully understand both the literal and symbolic meaning of the fox, as the fox plays an important role in this poem.

The thought fox is a poem about writing a poem. He is alone at the loneliest time of the night, and the most mysterious - midnight. He is a writer, as we can tell from line 4, where he mentions

“this blank page where my fingers move”

He is obviously waiting for the right idea or right words to enter his mind. The speaker’s imaginative setting is the “midnight moment’s forest” which we can contrast with his actual setting, a domestic one with the clock ticking. However, the poet senses a presence which disturbs him. This disturbance is not in the external world, as it exists only in the poet’s imagination. This disturbance is caused by an animal – a fox, whose body is invisible but which feels its way forward nervously through the dark undergrowth:

“Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;”

Starting from line 7, the readers start to move between the two worlds in the poem, the external world of the room and the view from the window, and the forest landscape containing the fox. At the beginning of the poem, there are a number of reminders that the speaker exist in the external world, “clock ticks”, “blank page”, and the “window” provides the details of the speaker’s actual setting, but starting from line 6, the readers will be merge with the internal world or the imaginative world of the poet.

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“Through the window I see no star:
Something more near

Though deeper within darkness
is entering the loneliness.”

Starting from line 6 is also the first indication of something else alive beside the poet in this silent night. The reader will soon discover that this animal is a fox in third stanza. At second stanza, we can see that as the thought fox is slowly unrevealed, the first idea that is going to fill the blank page is beginning to emerge. It is closer than the starless sky but it comes from a mysterious distance. The darkness ...

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