What does the Pike represent in the poem "Pike" by Ted Hughes?

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Ted Hughes/Pike/Image of Pike

What does the Pike represent in the poem “Pike” by Ted Hughes?

Ans.: Ted Hughes is one of the most famous names in the contemporary world of poetry. ‘Pike’ is a thought-provoking poem by the ‘Animal poet’ Ted Hughes, an eminent modern English poet. His poems show an inventiveness, a joy in the exercise of his art, that exists side by side with a curiosity that is sometimes compassionate, sometimes simply fierce. The three inches long pike is the protagonist of this poem. Its malevolent and voracious disposition, cruelty and cannibalistic nature cover the core of the poem. Outwardly it is a charming fish of fresh water with green stripes over its golden body.

As the poet points out, pike is a killer fish; it is born to kill. Even a newly born pike has an ancient, spiteful grin. Pikes ravel in dancing on the surface of water as they are very aware of the powers they hold. This understanding of their capacity to dominate over other fishes gives a continual motion and joy to their nature. Despite their frightful nature they are exquisite with their majestic grandeur in their color and movement; sometimes they are awe-struck at their own beauty. Their shapes produce on the onlookers an impression of mixed delicacy and horror. They small to our eyes they are very large in the world to which they belong. To the smaller creatures, which they kill under the water, they appear very large. They dwell in ponds where they lie still in the darkness beneath the surface. They lie on the last year’s black leaves, which are submerged in the water and from there they look upwards. Their jaws have the shape of a hooked clamp and inside the jaws are their teeth whose sharpness cannot be blunted at this stage of their existence which has been mould by their environment. They dominate over other fishes despite their tiny, little size. In the sub-terranean world they are held as monarchs. With machine-like jaws they wait for other creatures and when they see a victim they open up their jaws and half-swallowing other pikes or fishes they masticate their teeth within them.

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This poem reveals Ted Hughes’s thoughts about the evil nature of human being through the features of a ferocious fish Pike. Once in his childhood the poet had kept four pikes in an aquarium which gradually reduced to one. The most powerful had eaten up the others. Again, the poet finds that two pikes have died in one another’s gullets. Pikes are really mysterious.

In fact, the dictum “the survival of the fittest” could well applied to explain the nature of pike. In a submarine world full of conflict and struggle pike and other fishes have to constantly ...

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