Relic by Ted Hughes

Question 1

Context

Answer 1

• From Lupercal, 1960.
• Hughes: “my poems are about the war between vitality and death and may be said to celebrate the exploits of the warriors of either side.”

Question 2

Form and Structure

Answer 2

Form

• Dramatic monologue
• a more confessional and intimate poem from a poet who is rarely so personal.
• Hughes is making a wider, universal statement about time’s destructive powers.

Structure

• unusual 11 line stanza followed by a quintet.
• change in length marks a tonal shift into a darker, more nihilistic vision of what time is.
• second stanza has a more regular iambic metre and rhythm to the more irregular first stanza.
• the sea and time do not move in regular patterns, nor does this dramatic monologue.

Question 3

Language Techniques

Answer 3

Symbolism

• relic is a symbol of time.
• as often in hughes ideas of time are linked with death.
• the term “relic” also carries with it a religious resonance.
• hughes uses the symbol as celebration of the universal fact of death but at the same time noting how time and death is “cold” and “dark”.

Imagery
-literary allusion to Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
-the sea is used by S in one of the songs in the play to symbolise the healing properties of time, in the S song the sea turns something as ugly and chilling as dead men’s bones into “coral” and “pearls”.
-However Hughes’ use of imagery produces the opposite effect to Shakespeare
-the sea and therefore time, corrodes, destroys and chills:
“none grow rich in the sea”.