View Of A Pig - Ted Hughes

Question 1

‘Thick pink bulk”

Answer 1

Plosive and guttural alliteration
Sound is dense and clotted
Amplifying idea of pig’s dense body
Objectified
Disturbing

Question 2

It was too dead. Just so much // A poundage of lard and pork

Answer 2

Caesura - abruptness of death
Commodifying - only worth is to be eaten

Question 3

“The pig lay on a barrow dead. // It weighed, they said, as much as three men.”

Answer 3

Reportage, detached from emotion
Observational, not sentimental
Animal is dead and become an object of food - in spite of the fact it has physical greatness, it is just an aftermath of man’s cruelty
No emotional lament, but strikes attention of the readers

Question 4

“It was less that lifeless, further off.
It was like a sack of wheat”

Answer 4

Belongs to hard working agrarian world - simile
Pig ceased to be a vital being, rather an exhausted lifeless object.
When food needs began to be commercialised, animals became mere factory products

The pig which is slaughtered and dead invites the
attention of the readers to feel for the dead and they also become part of the poet‟s failure to do any action in
favour of the animal

Question 5

“Scald it and scour it like a doorstep”

Answer 5

Describes process of which pig fat is rendered “scald”
Final simile of doorstep:
Doorstep is hard and ignored by those treading on it - pig has no other use that part of a building humans trample over

Question 6

Depiction of death?

Answer 6

Interested in verisimilitude of human relationship with nature
Death presented as non symbolic - its unsentimental
It shows true, gory, visceral imagery

DEATH WITHOUT A FILTER/DELUSION