Ted Hughes's book, Crow: The Life and Songs of the Raven, is a collection of 67 dark poems and disturbing films that explore the perverse aspects of life and the human tendency towards violence. The book, dedicated to Assia Wevill, Hughes' late second wife, and her daughter Shura, was published in 1972, three years after their deaths. Although many of the poems make no mention of 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 called a trickster character, a supernatural God-like being, and even Satan himself. While none of these definitions can fully encapsulate the essence of Crow, they each offer insight into his complex personality. He is depicted as God's student ("The Raven's First Lesson"; 11), God's equal ("The Raven Hears Destiny Knocking"; 14) and even as God's superior (" The Raven blacker than ever”; Since Crow's timeline extends from the events of the Book of Genesis to a post-apocalyptic mating scene ("Notes for a Little Game"; 81), there are numerous references to divinity and spirituality . The source of these references is sometimes shamanism (which Hughes practiced) or the writings of ancient philosophers. But Hughes most often appropriates biblical mythology to define the context of his stories. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not 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 comical backdrop in the garden with Adam and Eve lying, seemingly brain dead and mindless, on the ground while God sleeps near. God does not know how to give life to these “yawning” and “inert” bodies, and the problem keeps him from sleeping. Enter Crow, the trickster, who bites "the worm" in two and thrusts one end into each person, forcing them into life and sex, because the separation of the two halves of the worm is unbearable. Certainly, this poem follows the characteristic extravagance of a cartoon, but also raises very deep spiritual questions. When Hughes says that Crow "bit the worm, the only son of God", is he trying to say that Satan, manifested in the book of Genesis in the form of a serpent (also known as the worm ), was in reality God's first and, at that time, only son? This notion of a father-son relationship between God and the Devil is similar to Milton's depiction 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 "join together quickly" to reconnect the two ends of the Worm is a criticism that Hughes makes of sex and its relationship to religion, for it is "the only begotten son of God" who represents them. come together.Another major Raven poem set in the Garden of Eden is "Apple Tragedy" (Hughes, 73). Incorporating, once again, stylistically caricatured elements, Hughes gives a fast pace of action to this poem interspersed with violence and comedy. It is the seventh day of creation, God's day of rest, and God gives cider to the Serpent, Adam and Eve. Eve seduces the Serpent and God tells Adam. When Adam attempts 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 her head", God will declare that he is "very pleased" and “everything [will]to hell." Although not as theologically profound as "A Childish Prank," "Apple Tragedy" is an irreverent account of the fall of man, taken from the third book of Genesis. Instead Whether the Fall was the work of Satan (the Serpent) or Adam and Eve, the “Tragedy of the Apple” places the blame on God, insisting that it was He who caused it all. This is. another example of Hughes' reinvention of mythology, how he takes a fresh approach to ancient stories Another common setting for the Raven poems is Calvary, the location of Christ's crucifixion "The Contender" tells the story. of a man, "the strongest of the strong", who crucifies himself (Hughes, 35 years old) recounts the presence of Mother Mary at the crucifixion of Christ, while in "The Contestant", "all the women of the world” come to the cross, but cannot shake man A very moving poem, Hughes decides to close it in his typically unorthodox way, calling the crucifixion a “senseless showdown.” This line of disparagement is found in many other poems, such as "The Crow's First Lesson" and "A Disaster", in which Hughes attacks Christianity for having hurt the world rather than saving it (Hughes 25, 11). "Crow's Song of Himself" tells the story of how Crow became Christ through God's attempts to destroy him. These poems can be interpreted as saying that no matter how much we (or God) try to remove 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 “tie his beak and go after the two thieves.” Instead of God's goodness being displayed on the cross, the darkness within comes out and takes revenge on the mocking thief and his accomplice (Luke 23). Further 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 monotonous style of “John begat Jacob, Jacob begat Isaac.” In “Lineage,” however, Hughes alludes to “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” of Genesis 1 with “In the beginning there was a cry” (Hughes, 4). Hughes then sets out to chronicle the history of man, through Adam, Mary, God (Jesus, born of Mary), but ends with "Never never never/Who begat Raven" to offer a vision very dark 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 assault on despair" that persists throughout 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 Revelation as the setting for his battle in which the "noise was as great/as the limits of possible noise could The most compelling and unique part of the text, however, is not Hughes' description of the battle itself, but rather the reason for the battle: "When the smoke cleared, it cleared." became clear/It had happened too often before/And it would happen too often in the future/And it happened easily/The bones were too much like slats and twigs/The blood was too much like water / The cries were too much like the silence of incomprehensible war: “shooting someone in the stomach/It was too much like lighting a match”, that is to say it was natural, easy, human C. t is a damning conviction, not for human society, but for human nature itself. The most attackHughes's vicious attack on Christianity is found in "A Disaster" (Hughes, 25). The Gospel of John, taken from the New Testament, begins with these 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 refers to Jesus saying that the Christian Messiah existed even before the book of Genesis. Hughes slyly alludes to this in his poem "A Disaster", which attacks God, blaming Him to create a world of suffering. It begins: “There was news of a word/Raven saw him killing men. Since Crow is a scavenging bird, we can assume that the deaths caused by this "word" were. actually working towards an evil goal (feeding Crow Hughes describes how the word "bulldozers/Whole cities in rubble/"). [...] drinking all the people/until there are none left " as it ravages the earth and pollutes it. The scenarios illustrate Hughes's belief that Christianity has spread violence and war more than peace and forgiveness. After a long period of "sucking the [world] /Like the nipples of a sow,” the tidal wave of Christianity will begin to subside and recede, eventually becoming “a dry salt lake” whose “era [is] past” frequented only by Crow , where he “walks and muses” (Hughes, 26) argues that this poem is simply another example of Crow's aversion to speech (Bentley, 2), but also fails to properly recognize the appropriation. Hughes's awareness of biblical language realized the power behind the term "word" and used its ambiguity to open the poem to multiple interpretations. The most intriguing and provocative of Crow's poems, however, is "Crow's First Lesson" is a classic scene reminiscent of God. dialogue with Satan in the book of Job. The basic premise behind the scene is God's attempt to teach the Raven to speak; instead of repeating the word "love", as God instructs Crow to do, Crow "gaps" and vomits something terrible. The images are linked only in the primal essence that each evokes in the first stanza Crow yawns and "the white shark crashed into the sea/And rolled downward, discovering its own depth" (Hughes, 11). In the next stanza, Crow vomits up "a bluebottle, a tsetse fly" and a mosquito, all carriers of disease, which then "zoom back and down/towards their various pots of flesh." Crow then produces the man's "prodigious bodiless head...a chattering protest" followed quickly by a vulva, which "falls upon the man's neck and constricts." In this poem, Hughes takes an unorthodox look at creation by examining different creations of God and their power to harm, such as the monstrous violence of a great white shark or disease-carrying insects. The comment Hughes offers is that while God tries to produce a certain idea of ​​love, Crow produces 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 others. Besides the setting of God and the Raven's interaction, Hughes alludes to the story of Creation found in Genesis for his imagery: the image of the shark "discovering its own depth" in the ocean coincides with Genesis 1 :6, where God creates a “space between the waters to separate water from water” (Genesis 1:6). This is the first cycle of creation found in "The Raven's First Lesson", but it is quickly followed by God making "the water teems with living creatures", manifested by the Raven's production of the, 1999. 260-263.