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Critical appreciation of That Morning by Ted Hughes

THAT MORNING (poem)

✍ By TED HUGHES 

📕 POETRY, PART- II

🎓MA- ENGLISH 

💥 Critical Appreciation of THAT MORNING 

 🔶️ 📚 📚

Interest in animals compels Ted Hughes to write poems on them. He loves animals and likes to portray their images in his poetry. It is, therefore, he is called the poet of animals. “That Morning” is a clear analysis of animal’s psyche through which Ted Hughes portrays critical theme of violence. In this poem, the poet shares his and his son’s experience of fishing. It is evident from the biography of Ted Hughes that he perfectly knew animal psyche. This poem is one of the two salmon (a species of fish) poems; other one is “The Gulkana”. The poem is from collection of “River”.

Ted Hughes along with his son Nicholes went for fishing where he decided to write this poem. He could not exclude animals nor could he exclude theme of violence from it. He was interested in animals right from his childhood. He spent most of his time with them in Calder Valley. Animals’ world was his own world. He knew their nature; he wanted to study them. Rarely, any poem of Ted Hughes is found in which he had not talked about animals. Even while explaining the process of writing poetry, he used fox as a symbol. In this poem, the poet shows us the world of fishes. It does not matter whether an animal belongs to sea or dessert, Ted Hughes wants to know about it. This poem elaborates theme of violence through fishes and bears. He has converted his fishing experience into a beautiful poem.

🔹️ Critical analysis of starting lines of “That Morning” demonstrates that it starts with the description of salmon fishes. The poet has reached near the river. He gazes at the movement of salmons and observes it minutely. Climate description is also there in starting lines of the poem.

🔶️ Initial lines of the poem are about weather. Salmons have also been introduced to the readers. Illustration of beautiful images increases charm of the poem. The poet gazes at a group of salmons. It seems to him that they are performing some kind of ritual. They are looking incredibly beautiful to him. He feels that salmons are getting some heavenly satisfaction while performing some kind of ritual. Brightness has overwhelmed them and they are shining in the deep water. Ted Hughes has created a wonderful sketch of fishes.

The poet is not alone, who is feeling the sanctity of fishes; his son is also feeling the same. It is, therefore, he uses the word “we” instead of “I” everywhere. Nevertheless, ritual ceremony of the fishes has not been ended yet; with every second the poet and his son can feel increase in holiness of salmons. Besides fishes, poet’s mind is also blessed. Although only salmons are performing a ritual yet the poet is also blessed. His mind has been filled with thoughts. The blessing, which he is feeling, is actually his imagination. After seeing fishes, his mind connects with nature.

“As if we flew slowly, their formations”; this line indicates that the poet is imagining his own world, in which he feels peace, harmony and blessings. There is also a fear in his mind that any wrong thought can end this blessing. “One wrong thought might darken. As if the fallen; World and salmon were over”; these lines reveal that the poet cannot think [to think] anything else. Meaning thereby, he cannot divert his attention towards any other subject otherwise he will lose his peaceful imagination. The line “That had let the world pass away—” shows the superiority of the fishes to everything because the poet feels that these fishes are everlasting. It is highly ironic. At the end, we would witness transient life of salmons.

Salmons are beautifully enjoying their devotional world. They were in marvelous mountains, shaped like a bow, along with some green plants. But suddenly the poet and his son witness a dreadful moment. Two bears came from somewhere, tore the salmons into pieces and ate them. It was the end of their journey.

 🔹️ Critical Analysis of Symbolic Significance of “That Morning” transpires that poem’s start and its end are entirely opposite to each other. Theme of violence is evident in last part of the poem. Entire poem is symbol of life. It depicts reality of life. Ted Hughes wants to say that life goes on in this way. There are many good days in life but suddenly due to an incident we loose everything. It also shows the brutality of strongers over weakers. It is the law of nature: “Destroy the weaker for pleasure; if not for pleasure than for need”. In this case, salmons are weak and bears are strong; therefore they eat salmons for their needs. Life is full of charms and at the same time full of tragedies. A sudden change can take a person from heaven to hell and from hell to heaven. Life is also full of wonders. Every day, many wonders are witnessed by people. Life goes on like this. Poem is very much close to reality. It reveals a truth. The poet presents reality of life. Some people in life are like salmons, who do no harm to others but still some bears eat [hurt] them. Life is mixture of both good and bad.

In short, the poem is beautiful representation of life. It has charm of its own but it is also dreadful. Beauty lies in the eyes of beholder. It depends on the beholder, how he sees them. Similarly, life lies in the mind. If a person is free from worries, he would find peace and harmony while seeing salmons but if he has witnessed the brutality of bears, then his mind sees brutality in everything. Fear will never leave him. Ted Hughes shows two main aspects of life; the good aspect and the bad aspect. “That Morning” is highly symbolic poem and it is about reality of life.

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Important Questions Poetry | M.A. English Part II (PU)

Important Questions Poetry | M.A. English Part II (PU) 

1. WILLIAM BLAKE

1. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
(b) O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm
(c) How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals;
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.
2. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My for ourtretched beneath the tree
(b) The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.
(c) And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
3. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry.
(b) Ah, sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that golden clime,
Where the traveller's journey is done
(c) For where'er the sun does shine
And where'er the rain does fall
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appal.
4. Blake As a Romantic Poet
5. Blake As a Mystic
6. Symbolism in Blake's Poetry
7. Comparison Between Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
8. Comparison Between Holy Thursday I and Holy Thursday II

2. S.T. COLERIDGE
9. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
(b) And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
(c) Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? And are there two?
Is Death that Woman's mate?
10. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) And orphan's curse would drag to hell
A spirit from on high;
But oh! more horrible than that
Is the curse in a dead man's eye!
Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
And yet I could not die.
(b) This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart --
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.
(c) Then reached the cavers measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voice prophesying war!
11. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread.
(b) Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awer,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!
(c) There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
12. Coleridge As a Poet of Supernatural
13. Coleridge As a Narrator/Story Teller
14. Theme of Torment in Coleridge's Poetry
15. Critical Appreciation of 'Kubla Khan' 
16. Moral of 'The Ancient Mariner' 

3. JOHN KEATS
17. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) It seem'd no force could wake him from his place;
But there came one, who with a kindred hand
Touch'd his wide shoulders, after bending low
With reverence, though to one who know it not.
(b) Then with a slow incline of his broad breast,
Like to a diver in the pearly seas,
Forward he stoop's over the airy shore,
And plung'd all noiseless into the deep night.
(c) Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him to to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
18. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou has thy music too, --
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
(b) Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But in the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
(c) Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
19. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
(b) Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
(c) When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, --that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
20. Keats As a Pure Poet
21. Keats As a Poet of Beauty
22. Sensuousness in Keats' Poetry
23. Negative Capability of Keats
24. Comparison Between 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Ode to a Grecian Urn' 

4. SEAMUS HEANEY
25. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
(b) Some day I will go to Archus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
(c) I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate ....
26. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbrel
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names.
(b) Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home,
(c) He had unstrapped
The heavy ledger, and my father
Was making tillage returns
In acres, roods, and perches.
27. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) A shadow bobbed in the window
He was snapping the carrier spring
Over the ledger. His boot pushed off
And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked.
(b) Sowers of see, erectors of headstones ...
O charioteers, above your dormant guns,
It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,
The invisible, untoppled omphalos.
(c) I love hushed air. I trust contrariness.
Years and years go past and I cannot move
For I see that when one man casts, the other gathers
And then vice versa, without changing sides.
28. Seamus Heaney As a Modern Poet
29. Major Themes in Heaney's Poetry
30. Symbolism in Heaney's Poetry
31. Critical Appreciation of 'The Tollund Man' 
32. Critical Appreciation of 'Personal Helicon' 

5. PHILIP LARKIN AND TED HUGHES
33. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread
(b) That how we live measures our own nature,
And at this age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.
(c) A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
34. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede.
(b) Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
(c) Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
35. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
(b) Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
(c) You went on and on. Here were reason
To recite Chaucer. Then came the Wyf of Bath,
Your favourite character in all literature.
You were rapt. And the cows were enthralled.
36. Explain the following extracts with reference to the context. 
(a) You went on --
And twenty cows stayed with you you hypnotized.
How did you stop? I can't remember
You stopping.
(b) ..... England could add
Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire
Hung with the drumming drift of Lancasters
Till the world had seemed capsizing slowly.
(c) Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath --
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
37. Important Features of Larkin's Poetry
38. Animal Imagery in Ted Hughes' Poetry
39. Comparison Between 'That Morning' and 'Thought Fox' 
40. Comparison Between 'Chaucer' and 'Full Moon and Little Frieda' 

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