Ted Hughes' book, Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, is a collection of 67 haunting and dark poems that explore the evil aspects of life and the human tendency towards violence. The book, dedicated to Hughes' dead second wife, Assia Wevill, and his daughter Shura, was published in 1972, three years after their deaths. Although many poems do not mention Crow, most of them are stories about Crow's life told from an omniscient perspective. The question of Crow's real identity is an open debate among literary critics. He has been labeled a trickster figure, a supernatural, god-like being, and even Satan himself. While none of these definitions can entirely summarize the essence of Crow, each offers insight into his complex personality. He is portrayed as God's pupil ("The Crow's First Lesson"; 11), God's equal ("The Crow Hears Destiny Knocking at the Door"; 14), and even as God's superior ("The Blackest Crow than ever"; 63). As Crow's timeline runs from the events of the book of Genesis to a post-apocalyptic mating scene ("Notes for a Little Comedy"; 81), there are numerous references to divinity and spirituality. The source of these references is sometimes Shamanism (practiced by Hughes) or the writings of ancient philosophers. But Hughes very often appropriates biblical mythology to create the background of his stories. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Many of the Raven's poems are set in the Garden of Eden. In “A Childish Prank” (Hughes, 10), for example, Hughes sets up a comic backdrop in the Garden with Adam and Eve lying, apparently brain-dead and spiritless, on the ground while God sleeps nearby. God cannot figure out how to bring these “blindly gaping” and “inert” bodies back to life, and the problem torments him until he falls asleep. Enter Corvo, the trickster, who bites "the Worm" in half and sticks one end into each person, forcing them into life and sex, because the separation of the two halves of the Worm is unbearable. Although this poem follows the characteristic whimsy of a cartoon, it also raises very deep spiritual questions. When Hughes says that Crow "bit the worm, the only son of God," he is perhaps trying to say that Satan, manifested in the book of Genesis as a serpent (also known as a worm), was actually God's first and, at that time, an only child? This notion of a father-son relationship between God and the devil is similar to Milton's portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost, where Satan, originally one of the most beautiful angels, is cast out of heaven. The need for man and woman to "quickly unite" with each other to reconnect the two ends of the Worm is a mockery that Hughes makes at sex and his relationship to religion, as he is "the only son of God" to put them in difficulty. get together. Another important Crow poem that takes place in the Garden of Eden is “Apple Tragedy” (Hughes, 73). Incorporating, once again, stylistically cartoonish elements, Hughes sets a rapid pace of action in this poem with violence and comedy interspersed. It is the seventh day of creation, God's day of rest, and God gives cider to the Serpent, to Adam and Eve. Eve seduces the Serpent and God tells Adam. When Adam tries to hang himself, Eve protests that the Serpent tried to rape her. For this reason, the poem says, whenever a woman sees a snake she will cry for help, and the man will "break a chair over his head", God will declare that he is "pleased" and "everything [will] fall into place". hell." While not as theologically profound as"A Childish Prank", "Apple Tragedy" is an irreverent retelling of the fall of man, from the third book of Genesis. Instead of seeing the Fall as the work of Satan (the Serpent) or Adam and Eve, "The Tragedy of the Apple" places the blame on God, insisting that He caused it all. This is another example of Hughes' reinvention of mythology as he takes a fresh approach to old stories. Another common setting for the Crow poems is at Calvary, the site of Christ's crucifixion. “The Contender” tells the story of a man, “the strongest of the strong,” who crucifies himself (Hughes, 35). John 19 tells of Mother Mary's presence at Christ's crucifixion, while in "The Contender" "all the women of the world" come to the cross, but cannot move the man. A very moving poem, Hughes decides to end it in his typically unorthodox way, calling the crucifixion a "senseless test of strength." This line of contempt follows in many other poems, such as “Crow's First Lesson” and “A Disaster,” where Hughes attacks Christianity for hurting, rather than saving, the world (Hughes 25, 11). "Crow's Song of Himself" is about how Crow became Christ through God's attempts to destroy him. These poems can be read as stating that no matter how much we (or God) try to suppress the darkness within us, it will always find a way to resurface. The "twist" of this poem is that instead of forgiving the thieves crucified with him (as Crist does in the Bible), Crow "cuts his beak and begins to strike the two thieves." Instead of showing God's goodness on the cross, the darkness within comes out and exacts vengeance on the thief who insults him and his accomplice (Luke 23). Other allusions to biblical mythology are found in "Lineage", "Crow's Account of the Battle", "A Disaster", and "Crow Blacker than Ever". “Lineage” is a perverse version of the Old Testament practice of keeping track of genealogy in the famous monotone style of “John begat Jacob, Jacob begat Isaac.” In “Lineage,” however, Hughes alludes to “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” of Genesis 1 with “In the beginning was the shout” (Hughes, 4). So Hughes sets out to tell the story of man, passing through Adam, Mary, God (Jesus, born of Mary), but ends with "never never never / Who bore the raven" to offer a very dark vision of the future of humanity. Daniel Hoffman suggests that Hughes chooses to begin his book this way because it offers “a violent, primal energy and [a] furious onslaught of desperation” that persists for the rest of the book (Hoffman, 1). ” is an obvious reference to the book of Revelation in the Bible (Hughes, 17). In it, Hughes uses the Apocalypse as the setting for his battle where “the noise was as much / As the limits of possible noise could bear.” The most compelling and unique part of the lyrics, however, is not Hughes' descriptions of the battle itself, but rather the motif of the battle: "When the smoke cleared it became clear/ This had happened too often before/ And it was about to happen too often in the future/ And it happened easily/ The bones were too much like shingles and twigs/ The blood was too much like water/ The screams were too much like silence." Hughes argues that man's nature is so violent that to end the incomprehensible war: "shooting in the belly/ was too much like lighting a match", that is, it was natural, easy, human This is an overwhelming belief, not for human society, but for human nature itself Hughes's rant against Christianity is found in "A Disaster" (Hughes, 25). The Gospel of John, from the New Testament, begins with the words: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning (John 1:1-2."The use of the word "Word" in these verses is in reference to Jesus, saying that the Christian messiah existed even before the book of Genesis. Hughes subtly alludes to this in his poem "A Disaster," which attacks God, accusing Him to create a world of pain. It begins: “The news of a word has come/ The raven saw it kill the men. Since the Crow is a carrion bird, we can assume that the deaths caused by this "word" were actually working for an evil purpose (feeding Crow). Hughes describes how the word "burned to the ground/ Entire cities to rubble/".[...]drinking all the people/ Till there was none left" as it ravages the land and pollutes it. The scenarios illustrate Hughes' belief that where Christianity has spread violence and war rather than peace and forgiveness. After a long period of "sucking the [world]/Like a sow's teats," the wave of Christianity will begin to subside and recede, eventually becoming "a lake." salty drying up" whose "era [is] over" frequented only by Crow, where he "walks and muses" (Hughes, 26). Paul Bently argues that this poem is simply a further example of Crow's aversion to the word spoken (Bentley, 2), but fails to adequately recognize that Hughes' conscious appropriation of biblical language also realized the power behind the term "word" and used its ambiguity to open the poem to multiple interpretations and provocative of Crow's poems is, however, "Crow's First Lesson." Crow's first lesson is a classic scene reminiscent of God's dialogue with Satan in the book of Job. The basic premise behind the scene is God's attempt to teach Crow to speak; instead of repeating the word "love", as God asks Crow to do, Crow "gaps" and vomits something terrible. The images are connected only in the primordial essence that each evokes the first stanza Crow gapes and "the white shark crashed into the sea/And went rolling down, discovering its own depth" (Hughes, 11). In the next stanza, the Crow vomits "a blue fly, a tsetse" and a mosquito, all disease-carrying insects which then "zoom out and down / To their various vessels of flesh." The raven then produces "the man's prodigious disembodied head... squeaking protest" followed quickly by a vulva, which "fall[s] upon the man's neck and tighten[s]." In this poem Hughes takes an unorthodox look at Creation by examining different creations of God and their power to do harm, such as the monstrous violence of a great white shark or disease-carrying insects. The commentary that Hughes offers is that while God is trying to produce a certain idea of ​​love, Crow produces the reality before spewing out another creation, Crow "gapes", a play on God's word for agape love. Agape is the Greek word for spiritual, non-sexual love, understood as the selfless love that Jesus practiced for other people. In addition to the setting in which God and the raven interact, Hughes alludes in his imagery to the creation story found in Genesis: the image of the shark "discovering its depths" in the ocean coincides with Genesis 1:6, where God creates an "expanse between the waters to separate the water from the water" (Genesis 1:6). This is the first cycle of creation found in "Crow's First Lesson", but is quickly followed by God makes the water “swarm with living creatures” manifested in Crow's production of mosquitoes, blueflies, and tsetses (Genesis 1:20). These disease-carrying insects are part of God's creation, Hughes points out, and they represent his second cycle of Creation. "The bodiless prodigious head of man" is Hughes's image for the creation of man: "Let us make man in our image," declared God, "and in our own., 1999. 260-263.