Wodwo by Ted Hughes

Question 1

Subject

Answer 1

A wodwo is a wild half-human/half-animal. This poem is a parable about a search for identity,
“What am I?”
Wodwo is a mystery word derived from one of Hughes’ favourite poems: ‘Sir Gowain and The Green Knight’.

Question 2

Language Techniques

Answer 2

Methods leave us uncertain about the identity of the subject narrator.
Imagery- nature imagery plays with the idea of “roots”;
“but there’s all this what is it roots
roots roots roots and here’s the water”
-the creature is searching for roots on two levels: for physical survival and a deeper emotional survival.
-Symbolism in the title.

Question 3

Structure/Form

Answer 3

• Poem begins with conventional syntax and punctuation but loses all conventions- even full stops by the end.
• Echoes of US poet William Carlos Williams- not familiar with UK audience in 1967.
• Poem ends in tentativeness and uncertainty contrasting the rootedness of nature with the rootlessness of the wodwo.
• Dramatic monologue.
• Absence of punctuation creates the effect of an emergent language and how a continuous process of questioning leads to more questioning.
• Indeed all that is left at the end of the poem is a questioning ego, confused and purposeless.

Question 4

Mood/Tone

Answer 4

-Light-hearted/charming poem. A playful poem on a serious question: What is my identity?

Question 5

Context

Answer 5

Hughes: “The country was in a mess”

• Published 1967.
• 1962 marriage ends. 1963 Plath’s suicide. 1962-67 Hughes published little.
• Hughes is not a confessional poet as Plath and her American mentor Robert Lowell are.
• Plath: “We wrote poems that are distinct and different as our fingertips themselves must be.”
• Hughes and Plath do share an extremism- an insistence on facing the worst.