Ted Hughes popularly known as animal poet portrays animal as better than humans. He has love and devotion for nature as well as animals. He believes that animals do not live under the fear of morality. Even though the themes of Hughes’ poetry is nature and animals, he do not romanticize them. But for Hughes poetry is a “journey into the inner universe” and “an exploration of the genuine self”.
In this 1959 poem “View of a Pig”, Hughes represents the pig through which he implies human characteristics. The pig mentioned in the poem is not just dead, but “too dead”, “less than lifeless”. The pig is referred to as’it’ in a cold way. The vast sized pig lie its “eyes closed” , and “it was like a sack of wheat”. Even though the narrator observes pig for a long time, he doesn’t feel pity for dead pig. He is frustrated, by thinking that how this pig could be moved. In the lines “the gadh in its throat was shocking”, is the first indication of the cause of its death. But that was shocking, not pathetic. The eating habit of the pig is mentioned as “they eat cinders, dead cats”. For a long time the narrator stared at the pig without feeling any remorse.
While analysing in a postmodern context, the themes of passivity, alienation and the lack of humanity of the post war era can be found in the observer’s behaviour. The poem can be also analysed in the finality of death. Hughes merely depicts the weight of the pig like “sack of wheat” to show that there is no life, only the body is left. The animal slaughter and industrial farming and also the cruelty of human beings can also be found in the poem.
