hello everyone and welcome back to english with kaylee in today's video we're going to take a look at one of ted hughes's poems which is entitled wind and this is on the gcse syllabus for 2022. um so if you're going if you're going to be taking that exam hopefully this video will be of some use to you so first of all we're going to read the poem together then we're going to look at a summary of what is happening within the poem it's very it's a packed poem there's a lot going on um and then we'll do a stanza by standard analysis um if you are new here could i please ask that you go ahead and like video and also subscribe to my channel because i'm always uploading gcse and a-level literature poetry okay let's get started wind by ted hughes this house has been far out at sea all night the woods crashing through darkness the booming hills winds stampeding the fields under the window floundering back a stride and blinding wet till day rose then under an orange sky the hills had new places and wind wielded blade light luminous black and emerald flexing like the lens of a mad eye at noon i scale along the house side as far as the coal house door once i looked up through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes the tent of the hills drummed and strained its guy rope the fields quivering the skyline a grimace and any second to bang and vanish with a flap the wind flung a magpie away and a black back gull bend like an iron bar slowly the house rang like some fine green goblet in the note that any second would shatter it now deep in chairs in front of the great fire we grip our hearts and cannot entertain book thought or each other we watch the fire blazing and feel the roots of the house move but sit on seeing the window tremble to come in hearing the stones cry out under the horizon very much a packed poem here with a lot of things going on um so before we get into the analysis let's just break it down what happens throughout uh throughout the story really it tells us a story so we see this violent storm that has left the speaker's house feeling like it's lost in the middle of the ocean straight away we think why why is it being placed there that that's not a common um it's not a common image that we we can easily understand so we're already thinking why what happened we then see the trees crashing we hear thunder in the hills and we see the winds thrashing through the fields and it's raining so heavily that nothing can be seen then day breaks and the sun rises so all of a sudden we start to feel as if something positive is coming however beneath the sunrise we see then the wind carrying a threatening light shining black and green all right this emerald color and so again we see the wind pick back up so then we see the speaker actually scales the side of the house to collect coal he goes to the call door sorry i say he um of course that we we would say the speaker they glance up at one point and they are hit by a force of the wind in the eye the hills are compared to tents very flimsy and and twisting against the rope that pegs it to the ground that's that guy rope that we saw then we see that the fields are shivering um and it seems as though the tent will snap and fly away and get swept up in the storm so really selling this idea and this image that though the storm is so powerful it could you know sweep the hills away the storm flings a magpie aside and buckles a larger bird showing its power then we are brought back to the house and the house moans and groans and it it reflects the fragility of a green glass that could shatter at any moment then we have a volta and it changes in topic and now we see the speaker and their partner sitting in their chairs in front of a fire and they seem struck with fear and they struggle to focus on anything around them and then we get this revelation that even they are struggling to communicate with each other so whilst looking at the fire they feel the house shifts from its roots but they remain seated so even though they feel as if the house the foundations of the house is shaking and becoming unstable they remain and then they look to the window and they see it rattle as if trying to come inside and the final image that we left that we are left with is that they listen to the rocks cry out in the distance okay so now we're going to take a look at it stanza by stanza and i'm going to share some annotations with you this is quite a comprehensive analysis um but of course there will always be other things you can add and interpret stanza one this house has been far out at sea all night the woods crashing through darkness the booming hills winds stampeding the fields under the window floundering black astride and blinding wet so as i said the very first sentence is quite it's it's quite complex in that we have a lot of questions um so we see this metaphor and it gives an idea that the house is isolated and it's in danger but at this point we don't know why and then it's not until the second line where we hear about the storm so we have these auditory imagery coming through of the crashing and the booming and this really represents the drumming of the storm and the bombarding the bombardment of the storm hitting the house and hitting nature around it winds stampeding the fields so again packed with imagery okay it's very loud it's threatening and of course stampeding is something that we associate with animals herds when they're angry and they charge at something so there's a lot of anger and threat within the first stanza then we see these these sentences here that are on john so there's a use of enjoyment but the lack of punctuation here is quite it really confuses the grammar of the sentence um we're not sure if it's the winds that are a stride so a stride is obviously almost like a person you know and seated on a horse um so it's very unclear here if it's the winds that are astride or is it the fields themselves or is it reference to looking out of the window and this blinding wet and not being able to see anything and i think hughes has done that to really mimic the confusion of the storm he doesn't want anything to be explained and expressed perfectly with an easy understanding because the power of nature is not something that can be easily understood it does whatever it wants to and we see that throughout hughes's poetry so we have this beautiful alliteration of f so the fields and floundering and this plosive b sound a black blinding and this really adds intensity to the situation but it does also give it some musicality in that it's almost if we can hear the wind blowing okay through the trees through the fields and then approaching the house so finally we have enjoyment here we have enjoyment throughout the poem um and why has hughes done that that's always what you want to think about what and of course here it's really it's very much to show the longevity of the storm until day rose so this really shows us how long this storm was bombarding nature and bombarding the home tilde rose then under an orange sky so the storm has has changed the landscape even the sky here so we get this idea of maybe you know daybreak it's first thing in the morning the sky is a beautiful orange color um and and it seems as though the hills had new places so obviously here we can see the speaker is in daylight and they probably can now see and witness what is outside um and they they possibly have a very different view of the same landscape maybe there are fallen trees flattened areas so the hills look different because of the destruction of the stone and wind wielded blade light luminous black and emerald we have personification here so this personification of the wind gives us an image and creates an idea of this powerful being this powerful thing and the word wielded when we think of wielding we were thinking to wield a sword to wield a weapon and that really suggests this intent to cause damage okay the wind and the storm is out for destruction again going back to that power and also within the same quote there we also have alliteration wind the w sound again emphasizing power and danger of the stones so blade light luminous black and emerald it's very interesting because this year juxtaposes the orange at the start of the stanza when we think of the morning and day break we think of the sunrise we think of oranges yellows a new day happiness and then all of a sudden it is completely immersed and completely covered with this luminous black and emerald light um and of course if we think about the connotations of black and dark colors it has a much more negative connotation than things like orange and yellow and then we have flexing like the lens of a mad eye so we've got a simile here um and this really goes to shows that the wind is violent and i think the word mad here really goes to show that how irrational it is um in that it follows no structure or no order um it doesn't follow any logic if we then move on to stanzas so stanza three starts with at noon i scaled along the house side um so here we see the speaker venturing out into the storm to collect coal we know that because he goes to the coal house door um but whilst outside the speaker looks up and when they look up we see this this gust of wind come and hit them in the in the balls of their eyes um so again we see danger the violent nature of the wind and again we can see those plosive sounds the b sound brunt balls we can see the decent dented okay so these sounds here really add emphasis to that danger and power of the storm the tent of the hills drummed and strained its sky rope so we have a metaphor here calling the hill giving it a totally different and you know comparing it to something which is it's not a natural comparison the hills here have also been transformed into a flimsy tent so we get this idea that you know we understand hills to be strong and sturdy and sound and yet this storm can almost flick it away with great ease so here we see lots of consonant sounds especially this sound brunt dent tent so this consonant again evokes powerful wind battering at the speaker as they're outside as they're trying to scale along the side of the house we get this harsh sound almost hitting the speaker as they try to collect the call it starts with the personification of the fields so the fields i in this this word here quivering it gives this idea that even the fields are cowering from the storm okay they are scared they're trying to protect themselves um at any second to bang and vanish with a flap so here now we return to the tent metaphor um and this again is saying that the wind will almost certainly blow the hills away at any second and then i mean throughout the stanzas so far there's been a lot of imagery and a lot of times when we as readers need to think and focus and and really try to imagine the setting and the scenery but then we're brought to quite a real and quite disturbing image the wind flung a magpie away and a black back gull bent like an iron bar slowly um again a very disturbing image we get this fierce winds destructing everything that's in its path so as we're reading now we're really starting to understand what is hughes's message here about nature so if we just go back to this bang and flap sound um we also see it flung this is of course onomatopoeia and this again adds to the intensity sorry and the power of the storm now when we look at a black black back goal um i think that this has been it's beautifully written of course we've got alliteration but what i particularly like is the hyphen here um the black back gull because we have this enjoyment here it's almost as if we can we can really see this bird being pulled apart being stretched um or as huge put it being bent like an iron bar slowly now when you read that i think that this is quite an odd simile okay to bend like an iron bar well that's not an you know it's not an easy comparison it's not one that's very natural but i think that is what hughes is trying to emphasize the speaker's response to such a site in seeing that he really didn't the speaker really felt this is this isn't normal okay and this is unusual um and by doing that it also really gives that imagery um of this bird almost being stretched so this stanza ends with the house now this is quite interesting because obviously the the tension is building up within the poem we've just seen that it's flung and magpie and that it's bending uh different birds that are in its path and then we have the house so what's happened to the house okay it's a slight cliffhanger what has the storm done to the house and then we get some we get some beautiful similes and and beautiful imagery rang like some fine green goblet in the note that any second would shatter it um so we have one gentleman again if you're not sure what a green goblet is i've posted a picture here and within the powerpoint it is just a green glass and of course as you said it looks very fragile and and here the winds it's as if the sound the note so the note here is referring to the sounds of the wind that it could destroy the home as easily as a glass and of course this really also this simile further emphasizes the fragility of the house in the storm and we get this beautiful idea or suggestion that it's as if the speaker is waiting for the crescendo of the storm so when we talk about the musicality of it and the notes it seems as if it's all building up to this big eruption of thunder then we have a vaulter and the the topic and the location completely changes um we move now from the outside and from the external structure of the home to the people within it now deep in chairs in front of the great fire we grip again we have enjoyment here but as you read you think what do they grip what are they gripping because of course if you're in a dangerous situation for example a ship out at sea if we go back to stanza one and this image of being alone and isolated in a dangerous place in the middle of the ocean people tend to hold on to physical objects to ground themselves to protect themselves so we have this enjoyment the tension's building again what have they gripped why and then we get our hearts and of course this is very displaced within the rest of the poem so now we're thinking okay why why is it that they're not grabbing a physical object around them but something that is not tangible and they say they cannot entertain book thought um and of course i this is quite expected who could in such conditions who could just sit down and read a book um you know during this this grand dangerous powerful storm and then we get on jean monde again hit with this revelation of all each other very very different to the previous stanza this is totally unexpected the tone changes and the meaning of the storm is starting to become quite metaphorical now in terms of okay there's something wrong within the relationship and we get this idea of a stormy relationship they're not harmonizing they're not coexisting well we watch the fire blazing now of course a fire should provide warmth and comfort to those who need it but what we also have to remember is that it also carries very symbolic overtones of danger danger death destruction so we're unsure at this point which is it providing or which is it symbolizing for the couple and feel the roots of the house move okay so here we see this foundations the foundations are shifting beneath them and again we're led to question is this a metaphor for a change in their relationship is it now that it is not a calm structurally sound relationship are there cracks in the foundation are things starting to crumble to move to disintegrate like the roots moving from the earth itself but they sit on and what's very interesting here is that the speaker moves away from the topic completely for the last two step the last two lines in the last stanza perhaps it's too emotional too difficult to even express or discuss we can see that they find it difficult to communicate so possibly even communicating one's emotions is difficult so it moves away to seeing the window tremble to come in hearing the stones cry out under the horizons we get this return to the outside it's possibly too painful for the speaker to continue talking about the relationship and the personification of the window makes the house itself feel afraid you know the windows trembling and again this could also be a reflection of the speaker or the speaker's partner and how they feel about the state of that relationship and then the final thing i want to talk about is uh this uh phrasal verb here cry out um so the stones are also personified here um so we know that the storm will destruct all um it will wreak havoc it will injure and it will hurt but then we also have to look at this deeper meaning and other connotations um given that this stanza has really brought to light some questions about the relationship of the speaker and their partner could this also suggest the cry of the residence or the stone silence between them so there could be a play on words there with the stones so to have stone sense to have no conversation and no communication at all now of course it's written as as a dramatic monologue it's written in first person so some people do suggest that it is possibly hughes himself um when he wrote this poem he was of course married to sylvia plath and they as we know had quite a turbulent relationship um and it ended with the soviet path committing suicide um so there are some questions about that but it's very important in the exam that you're careful not to just assume that you can suggest it um but there's not enough evidence within the text to say that this is 100 about their personal relationship but it could be suggested a look at form meter and rhyme within the poem so the form actually if you look at it from a distance it seemed quite orderly in in its structure so we've got six queer trains we have the use of slant rhymes which is also known as half rhymes so we do see some kind of elements of more traditional poetry shall we say we're used to seeing rhyme within poems um but it's very interesting that this poem is is about a lack of control so it it seems to it juxtaposes really um the topic of um of the poem itself now this could be used to emphasize humans all right and how we have a need to control even things that you know even when we're in difficult circumstances the meter so it's written in free verse however it doesn't stray far from pentameter okay and even the very first line it's almost perfect iambic pentameter except for the far out right in the middle and now this decision could have been made to almost mimic the beating of the storm as it approached the home um because we also had we almost had this done done done sound um so the beating and we've seen that the drumming all of these words crashing and this musical idea that is that is embedded throughout the poem and then finally for rhyme um we do see we see some elements of full rhyme um but there's there's much more half rhyme user of the poem and this really creates musicality to the poem but it doesn't create a steady or harmonious sound and again you always have to think about why why would a poet do that in this particular poem why has hughes done that well it is much like the sound of the storm okay dangerous you know blowing um you know one minute there's this intense light and thrashing then we see the clouds you know that we see the sun rise but also very much like the relationship itself we see it's not harmonious and steady there are some problems within it so that's my analysis of ted hughes's wind and if you have any questions or you like to add anything please do comment down below as i said don't forget to like and subscribe as i'll be posting more videos in coming weeks and months and yeah i really hope that it's helped you so thanks for watching and i'll catch you in the next one bye guys [Music]