Notes on "Telegraph Wires" by Ted Hughes

Overview

• Collection: Part of the 1989 collection "Wolf Watching."
• Theme: Examines telegraph wires as a metaphor for communication and connection.
• Tone: Serene depiction with an underlying ambivalence towards technology.

Key Themes

Communication and Connection

• Metaphor: Wires represent links between distant places and people.
• Ambivalence: Language hints at the negative aspects of technology reducing face-to-face interaction.
• Irony: Despite linking people, the impersonal nature of technology may foster isolation.

Nature vs. Modernity

• Tension: Human interaction with nature through technology can distance people from nature.
• Hughes' View: Technology is seen as arranging the world to avoid experiencing it.
• Symbolism: Telegraph poles in landscapes symbolize human attempts to control nature.

Communication Failures

• Highlighting Distances: While meant to connect, technology can also emphasize misunderstandings.

Structure and Form

• Stanzas: Six stanzas, each comprising two lines.
• Line Lengths: Irregular, ranging from 5 to 14 syllables.
• Meter: Rising meter due to prevalence of iambs and anapests.
• Rhyme Scheme: AABBCC, etc., with varying rhyme types:
  • Masculine: Made/played, space/face.
  • Feminine: Heather/weather.
  • Half-rhyme: Airs/withers, more/ear.
  • Pararhyme: Weather/withers.
  • Internal Rhyme: Together with Heather/weather.

Literary Devices

Sound Techniques

• Musicality: Use of alliteration, consonance, and assonance.
• Examples: "Picked and played", "So oddly, so daintily made".

Imagery and Figurative Language

• Metaphors: "Picked up and played", "Revolving ballroom of space".
• Personification: "The thing comes alive in your ear", towns whispering.
• Vivid Imagery: Visual and auditory imagery to convey themes.

Historical Context

• Title: "Telegraph wires" evokes nostalgia, even though outdated by 1989.
• Continuity: Symbolizes historical continuity in communication.

Analysis of Key Lines

Opening Lines

• Instructional Tone: "Take telegraph words, a lonely moor" hints at control and exploitation of nature.
• Loneliness: Describes the landscape of Hughes' youth and later life.

Second Stanza

• Connectivity: "Towns whisper to towns over the heather" suggests newfound communication.
• Personification: Towns as people add layers of meaning.

Nature's Resistance

• Weather's Role: Nature's resistance to technology's imposition.
• String Instrument Metaphor: Nature plays wires like a harp.

Cosmic Perspective

• Vastness: Universe as an ever-rotating system; human achievements are small.
• Final Metaphor: "Tones that empty human bones" - technology's eerie and draining impact.

Conclusion

• Reflection on Place: Hughes suggests human achievements are transient in nature's grand scheme.
• Tone: Humbling realization of nature's enduring power and our fragility.

Closing Remarks

• Engagement: Encourage questions and engagement with the content.
• Call to Action: Subscribe for more content on English literature and exam techniques.