Analysis of the poem Wind

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Emily Whitmore

Wind

This poem is by the poet Ted Hughes and is mainly about the wind.  There are many different images in this poem, the main one of course being the wind as indicated by the title.  Although this is the main image, there are quite a few others too.  In this poem, Ted Hughes uses many aural techniques to create images in the reader’s mind, such as alliteration, metaphors and similes, to name a few.

One of the most prominent images in this poem is the landscape which the wind is traveling over.  The description of the landscape gives the reader the image of a very dull and dismal place, like you would find in a horror movie or something.  This image comes from the descriptive words used.  For example, the poet uses the words ‘darkness’ and ‘blinding wet’ which aren’t really counted as happy things but they are generally the type of thing you will find in a horror story.  Ted Hughes personifies the landscape with things such as ‘the booming hills’ and ‘skyline a grimace’, this makes the landscape seem like it is human and is being affected by the wind and it gives the reader the image of then landscape being afraid of the wind, the line ‘fields quivering’ especially gives this impression because you can imagine the fields sort of trembling in fear as the wind passes.  The poet uses onomatopoeia in his poem such as ‘crashing’ and ‘booming’, which emphasizes the horror of the night and the darkness and how loud the wind is.  Then it says that the ‘day rose’ and everything is fine again, now that the shadows are gone, whereas before the hills were ‘booming’ they are now quiet and are ‘new places’.

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The personification of the wind with the word ‘stampeding’ gives the wind an almost scary and hurried air because the wind cannot actually stampede because it has no substance and is not living thing.  When you think of a stampede the mind immediately conjures up an image of a stampede of animals, running very fast away from or to something and overwhelming.  At the end of the poem in the fourth stanza we get the image of the giant fire with people sitting in front of it.  I think that these people are terrified of the wind coming and ...

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