Crow’s Fall

When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.

He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.

He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.

He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked.

At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,

Shadows flattened.

But the sun brightened—

It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.

"Up there," he managed,

"Where white is black and black is white, I won."

Summary of Crow’s Fall

In ‘Crow’s Fall’, Ted Hughes illustrates the reason how the crow became black in
color. The story of the crow also illustrates the effect of transgressing one’s limits.
According to the poet, once the crow’s feathers were all white in color. One day he
thought that the sun was shining brighter than him. He became envious of its
radiance and decided to attack it. His ambition made him temporarily blind. Without
thinking about the outcome he flew close to the sun to defeat it. This event led to the
crow’s downfall. As he went near the sun, he “returned charred black” and lost his
white feathers.
Structure of Crow’s Fall
Being a poem of the modern period, ‘Crow’s Fall’ hasn’t any specific structure. It is
in free verse. It contains 17 lines with uneven line lengths. Some lines are extremely
short having only two syllables in them while some lines are comparatively long. The
poem has no rhyme scheme. Though there are some lines that rhyme together like
line 5 and line 7. The metrical composition of the poem is also irregular which is one
of the chief characteristics of modern poems. The majority of the lines are
composed of trochaic feet with some spondees. Spondee is a foot having two
stressed syllables. In a trochaic foot, the first syllable is stressed and the second
one remains unstressed. The poet uses this meter to heighten the tension in the
poem. This “falling rhythm” is also relevant to the overall theme of the poem.

Literary Devices in Crow’s Fall

Crow’s Fall’ by Ted Hughes is a plain and direct poem. It doesn’t have too many
literary devices lingering here and there. Actually, the poet isn’t in a mood of
convincing someone by using ornamental epithets. There are some devices that are
used only to maintain the flow of the poem. Readers can find such a literary device
called anaphora in lines 3–8. All these lines begin with the same word, “he”. In this
poem, the crow is personified from the beginning of the poem. It is an example
of anthropomorphism. Readers come across another instance of personification in
the line, “trees grew suddenly old.” The poet uses the color “white” as a metaphor. It
is compared to the purity of the heart. In the last line, “Where white is black and
black is white”, is an example of chiasmus.

Analysis of Crow’s Fall

Lines 1–4
When Crow was white he decided the sun was
(…)
He decided to attack it and defeat it.

In the first four lines of ‘Crow’s Fall’, Ted Hughes is referring not to any ordinary
crow. This mythological crow is not black. It has white feathers.
The metaphorical use of the word “white” hints to us that it was in a pure state. One
day the crow thought that the sun was beaming brighter than its feathers. He
became frustrated and decided to beat the sun in a battle. Thus he could prove that
he was more powerful than it.

The thought of defeating the sun echoes the story of Satan. In this poem, Sun is a
symbol of God. Like Satan, the crow defied the limits and tried to be as powerful as
the sun. It gradually led to his downfall like the fate of fallen angels in the Bible.

Lines 5–11
He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.
(…)
Shadows flattened.

The crow was full of conviction that he could defeat the sun. He started to get
himself ready for the battle. Ted Hughes writes this section in a manner that brings a
sense of humor and irony in the poem. The crow’s activity primarily seems
humorous. It also brings out his hollowness. His arrogance had made him ignorant
of the fact that the sun couldn’t be defeated. In his frame of vision, the sun seemed
smaller than him and it encouraged him to challenge the power of the sun.
According to Hughes, “He laughed himself to the center of himself” as he wasn’t
aware of what he was doing. He was under the spell of a temporary but powerful
emotion called “overambition”.

The crow pointed his beak towards the sun and flew with full force to replace its
position. He cawed his battle cry in the sky. As it flew closer to the sun, his body
temporarily hid the sun. The trees looked old for the shadow around them. In
‘Crow’s Fall’ Hughes uses this imagery to intensify the tension of the poem.

Lines 12–17
But the sun brightened—
(…)
“Where white is black and black is white, I won.”

In the last few lines of ‘Crow’s Fall’ by Ted Hughes, the poet presents the effect of
overambition. The crow had returned to its place. The sun was shining again in the
sky but the crow lost his whiteness. His feathers were “charred black”. “He opened
his mouth but what came out was charred black.” It means that his blind ambition
had burnt his purity also.

At last, the crow said, “Where white is black and black is white, I won.” This line is
significant enough with respect to the theme of the poem. Here Hughes illustrates
that the crow’s mentality was not actually changed. Though his outer appearance
had changed for his act of presumption, his basic thinking remained the same. He
was still thinking that he had defeated the sun.

This statement is diabolic in meaning. The resonance of Satan’s argumentation is

visible in this line. Satan also tried to convince the angels with such equivocal
statements. In this way, Hughes not only depicts the physical change of the crow but
also presents its inner transformation in his poem ‘Crow’s Fall‘.

Crow’s Fall Questions and Answers

BROAD QUESTIONS
1) Give a critical appreciation of the poem.
Ans) In ‘Crow’s Fall’, Ted Hughes presents the hamartia of the mythological crow
for his act of presumption. Ted Hughes illustrates the reason how the crow became
black in color. The story of the crow also illustrates the effect of transgressing one’s
limits. According to the poet, once the crow’s feathers were all white in color. One
day he thought that the sun was shining brighter than him. He became envious of its
radiance and decided to attack it. His ambition made him temporarily blind. Without
thinking about the outcome he flew close to the sun to defeat it. This event led to the
crow’s downfall. As he went near the sun, he “returned charred black” and lost his
white feathers. Being a poem of the modern period, ‘Crow’s Fall’ hasn’t any specific
structure. It is in free verse. It contains 17 lines with uneven line lengths. Some lines
are extremely short having only two syllables in them while some lines are
comparatively long. The poem has no rhyme scheme. Though there are some lines
that rhyme together like line 5 and line 7. The metrical composition of the poem is
also irregular which one of the chief characteristics of modern poems is. The
majority of the lines are composed of trochaic feet with some spondees. Spondee is
a foot having two stressed syllables. In a trochaic foot, the first syllable is stressed
and the second one remains unstressed. The poet uses this meter to heighten the
tension in the poem. This “falling rhythm” is also relevant to the overall theme of the
poem.

‘Crow’s Fall’ by Ted Hughes is a plain and direct poem. It doesn’t have too many
literary devices lingering here and there. Actually the poet isn’t in a mood of
convincing someone by using ornamental epithets. There are some devices that are
used only to maintain the flow of the poem. Readers can find such a literary device
called anaphora in line 3-8. All these lines begin with the same word, “he”.

In “Crow’s Fall” Hughes describes the crow as first being “white” which in literature is
associated with the sense of purity and innocence. Hughes takes the symbol of a
crow, which is associated with darkness and evil and puts it under another spotlight.
Hughes takes something that is known for its darkness and brings it into the light.
Hughes continues his description of the crow as having the need to “attack” and
“defeat” the “sun” that “glared much too whitely”. It’s as if even though the crow is
“white,” he doesn’t like the fact that the sun is shining “whitely”. It’s as if the sun is
shining innocently and the crow wants to get rid of it. Even though the crow is white
on the outside, his inner self is still has the urge to be destructive. His urge to
destroy the sun is later what causes Hughes to describe the crow as “charred
black”. His actions were reflected in his appearance when he returned. His inner
feelings and view in reality take over his body when he goes …s also the way that
the crow flew the black flag of himself. There is the idea that the voice given to the
crow was because he was the only one that could amend the link between heaven
and earth. The way that he flew the flag of himself also allows the thought that there
is a connection between the conquering the world a… middle of paper ….. …

and what the crow really did. The crow was given the qualities of greed and
deception that humans have and used it for his own personal gain. The crow
continued to demonstrate how one situation in life can be seen in two different ways
depending on the person.

2) How is the crow associated with the biblical themes?

Ans) In “Crow’s Fall” Hughes describes the crow as first being “white” which in
literature is associated with the sense of purity and innocence. Hughes takes the
symbol of a crow that is associated with darkness and evil and puts it under another
spotlight. Hughes takes something that is known for its darkness and brings it into
the light. Hughes continues his description of the crow as having the need to “attack”
and “defeat” the “sun” that “glared much too whitely”. It’s as if even though the crow
is “white,” he doesn’t like the fact that the sun is shining “whitely”. It’s as if the sun is
shining innocently and the crow wants to get rid of it. Even though the crow is white
on the outside, his inner self is still has the urge to be destructive. His urge to
destroy the sun is later what causes Hughes to describe the crow as “charred
black”. His actions were reflected in his appearance when he returned.

In ‘Crow’s Fall’ it is explained the Crow was originally white, but grew angry at the
white sun and went to fight it: But the sun brightened –

It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black. “Up there,’ he
managed,
‘Where white is black and black is white, I won.’

The poem is a little akin to the types of stories told to children to explain tigers’
stripes, but the stark emphasis on colour difference relates to an ongoing debate in
anthropology about the structure of thinking, language, and meaning.

In 1929 the German philosopher Ludwig Klages coined the term ‘logo-centricism’ to
denote what he felt was a Western phenomenon of locating meaning within a
‘logos’. ‘Logos’ is a Greek word meaning word, reason or spirit; Klages and those
who followed him felt that most Western philosophy saw all meaning residing in this
transcendental concept. Jacques Derrida was one of the best-known inheritors of
the idea of ‘logocentrism’, and he aimed to undermine its results. He and other
‘deconstructionists’ believed that lots of key ideas related to implied logos an
assumption that some concept had special inherent meaning. For example, a
traditional idea of male sexuality as something present and single and whole,
whereas female is hidden and multiple could be explained by a false reliance on the
logos’ of male sexuality.

For Derrida, terms always come in pairs, such as white and black, with one leaning
towards the concept of ‘logos’, in this case white. In ‘Crow’s Fall’, Crow ascends to
‘where white is black and black is white’; that is to say, he achieved a suspension of
logos, and still returned black. Derrida felt that the only way to begin to override the
dependence on ‘logos’ was to begin examining the non-logos side of pairings. In this
case Hughes has crafted a poem which does so. Indeed the whole of Crow, with its
strange exploration of darkness and the absurd, could be viewed as part of the
project envisaged by Derrida to shift human society away from its addiction to logos,
which would be a fundamental change in the idea of humanity itself and hence a
radical anthropological action.

We have explored some of the ways in which the type of thought Ted Hughes was
exposed to during a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology both informs and
creates the meaning of Crow. By placing the poems in an intellectual context-we
gain insight to why their strange and alienating, yet familiar and engaging style and
content have led them to be ranked amongst not only Hughes’ greatest work, but
also the greatest poetry of the twentieth century.

3) Discuss the themes and objectives of the From the Life and
Songs of the Crow, by Ted Hughes.
Ans) In Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, Hughes, for the first time, wrote
a sequence of poems within a framework which took the form of a folk-mythology of
his own construction. Through the quasi-human figure of Crow, he continued his
own journey of exploration into the human psyche and, at the same time, his
handling of the death/rebirth theme in his poetry began to be more complex. It took
on the aspect of a quest, a Shamanic journey to the underworld, which Hughes
believed to be the basic theme in many folktales, myths and narrative poems.

The poems included in Crow are part of a large number of poems which make up a
“vast folk epic” which tells the story of Crow. Hughes began this story at the
suggestion of American artist, Leonard Baskin, who wanted an accompanying text
for some of his anthropomorphic bird engravings. Amazingly, Hughes once said that
he began Crow as children’s story: but the eventual development of Crow’s
character, the sardonic, sometimes gruesome humour of the poems, and Hughes’
sophisticated and heretical manipulation of Biblical stories, has made Crow very
much a bird for adults. Speaking on the BBC before the publication of Crow an
argument develops between God and his Nightmare about the adequacy of Man as
a creation. “God is very defensive of Man. Man is a very good and successful
invention and given the materials and situation he’s quite adequate”. The Nightmare
plunges back to “ferment and gestate in matter” and a little embryo begins. That is
how Crow was created. As a creation which is better than Man, Crow is a fáilure, for
Hughes also said that “maybe Crow’s ambition is to become a man”. However,
Hughes made it clear that the actual Crow story is “not really relevant to the poems
as they stand: …. I think they have a life a little aside from it. The story brought me
to the poems … was a sort of machine that assembled them”.

This allegory of the folktale prince and his choice of horse is an interesting one, for it
shows Hughes deliberately adopting the “wretched, black, horrible, little nothing”, as
his vehicle and ‘mask’ for his new poetic journey. Crow comes complete with all the
mythological and folk-loric accretions which crows have gathered through their long
existence, and of course, all the natural characteristics of the crow species.

Hughes makes it clear that Crow has many characterisuos …. common with Man.
Also, given the cheeky, interfering, and amoral, destructive and sometimes
constructive personality which emerges through the medium of Crow’s “life and
songs”, plus Hughes’ own predilection for mythological archetypes, the comparison
of Crow with the Trickster figure common in many mythologies is natural. The
counterpart of Hughes’ Crow, who, laughing, singing and eating, displays his
supreme egotism by “Flying the black flag of himself” through the havoc and horror
which he has helped to create. Trickster has never been restricted to one society. In
European countries he appears in the guise of Jester or Fool, and his roots in the
human psyche are deep.

We can see the characteristics of Hughes’ Crow and his connection with Man, but
the psychological implications of Crow’s character are broader still. Radin writes that
the Trickster cycle “represents our efforts to deal with the problem of growing up”:
that it is a “speculum mentis wherein is depicted man’s struggle with himself and
with a world into which he had been thrust without his volition and consent an
attempt by man to solve his problems inward and outward”.

In Crow, Hughes, not only redefined God, he adopted Biblical language and style,
recreated the Biblical Genesis story, perverted the message of the supreme power
of God’s love and cast Crow in the role of “crucified” and reborn hero and survivor of
the Apocalypse. Crow was subjected to teaching and to tests, he was meant to learn
humanity and wholeness, to develop a soul, but only in poems published in a later
poetic sequence did he achieve real progress on his quest.

Crow’s interference in God’s work begins with ‘A Childish. Prank’. God, Hughes
explained in his story, is at first “rather indulgent” towards Crow. “He tends to show it
the beauties and let it look on while he shows the marvels of the beginning”. Having
made Adam and Eve, however, God has problems getting their souls into their
bodies. “The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep”. Crow intervenes, and in
so doing invents sex as an urge which man and woman cannot control or
understand.

Jhuman The Trickster element in Crow’s behaviour is obvious, but Hughes, too, is
breaking taboos. God tries to teach Crow human skills emotions – tries to change
his amoral, selfish nature. In ‘Crow’s First Lesson’, God attempts to teach Crow how
to talk, but his efforts to teach him the word ‘Love’ result only in the creation of
horror. Crow gapes, and vomits up his own devouring versions of love “the white
shark”; “a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito”; and man’s bodiless head with woman’s
vulva dropped over it and tightening around his neck. God, defeated, goes back to
sleeping, leaving Crow to his own devices and Crow takes advantage of God’s
slumber by inventing his own ‘communion’. This is a devastating parody of the
Christian rite, in which Crow literally partakes of God’s body.

This sacrilegious reconstruction of Biblical lore, which is responsible for the stunning
impact of some of the poems, is a clear indication of the way in which Crow
resembles the Trickster Cycles, for Trickster is traditionally a “breaker of taboos and
destroyer of the holy-of-holies”. It also illustrates the extent to which Hughes has
adopted the Crow ‘mask’ in these poems, and how he takes on himself the role of
Trickster. In Crow, Hughes is doing just what Jung describes when he says that
“there is something of the Trickster in the character of the shaman and medicine-
man, for he, too, often plays malicious jokes on people”

Crow may well seem to some like a malicious joke, and those critics who were
convinced that Hughes enjoyed wallowing in violence and “the eager pursuit of
blood and thunder” certainly felt vindicated. when Crow was published. Crow,
however, is a very modern version of the Trickster Cycle fitting well with the
surrealist and absurd sentiments of other twentieth century writers such as Kafka; of
artists such as Francis Bacon; and of some of the Eastern European Poets whose
works` Hughes has helped to make available in translation. In it he succeeds, as
Calvin Bedient commented, in joining “the twin nihilistic themes of the century the Id
and the Void with witty and enormous invention”. Hughes himself, however, seemed
to feel that the Trickster Cycle had, in a way, taken him too far, too fast.

4) Comment on the writing style of Ted Hughes.

 Ans) Hughes arguably personifies the notion of the ‘animal poet’, and through the
spectrum of nature, he effectively magnifies and dissects the relationship between
the animal world and that of humanity and social conventions, as well as the notion
of identity via myth.

Perhaps it is only fair to label Hughes an ‘animal poet’, if we are willing to approach
his poetry with our mindset firmly rooted in the notion of the animal world as one
which is savage, sometimes sadistic and nearly always in some way capable of or
prone to violence for survival. This idea is encompassed in a direct parallel of the
human species as one which is equally capable of savagery yet essentially lacking
in the kind of innocence animals possess naturally through their inability to execute
rational thought or respond to conscience. The idea of creating myth out of
personifying animals as a crude representation of human folly is integral to Hughes
exploitation of animal imagery. He uses animals in various ways to expose the
downfalls of humanity and to emphasise the viewpoint that humanity is transcendent
and frail compared to the forces of nature. Hughes seems to have a horrified
fascination of Darwin’s view of nature and consequently explores the idea of the
survival of the fittest and adaptation.

As critics, we might assume Hughes’ motives behind such violent depictions of

nature as part of a sort of social commentary, stem, for the most part, from his own
personal life experience and the pain and sufferings thereof. Both Hughes’ wives,
one being the poet Sylvia Plath, committed suicide while married to Hughes so it is
little wonder his poetry demonstrates a rather tortured and bitter attitude towards life
and indeed death. Hughes attempts to capture in writing, experiences which are
beyond the restriction of mundane daytime life, borrowing from dreams and the
unconsciousness in the small hours of the morning. He creates a link between the
dream world and animals and this is reflected in the idea of myth in the collection
Crow. Hughes uses this particular animal as a model for the entire collection and in
turn creates a myth based on the crow with an emphasis on the violence and
immorality of human energy. This myth making is a lineage which harks back to the
romantic poetry. Hughes’ throw back to this tradition in Crow is reminiscent of
Heaney’s North. Significantly both editions of poetry appeared within a few years of
each other. It is easy to draw a parallel between Heaney’s motives for mythmaking
with regard to his dilemma over national identity and the conflict surrounding his
native Northern Ireland and to Hughes’ own inclination for highlighting the folly of his
own society in England.

The crow seems to represent the ‘gangrenous’, marred, evil side of society; he is
Hughes emblem of what is wrong with a Britain which is ‘Blacker than ever’. In ‘Crow
Blacker than. Ever’, Crow cries, ‘This is my creation’. He is for the most part sadistic
and revels in the infliction of pain upon man and their God- In ‘A childish prank’
Hughes writes, *Crow went on laughing’. This is perhaps a reflection of the fact that
Hughes did not believe in Christianity but rather advocated Darwinism theory and
chooses to explore the evolution of animal nature as fact while depicting religion as
myth.
In ‘Crow and the Birds’, Hughes employs contemporary, mechanized words among
birds who are acting romantically except for the crude image of the crow. He builds
up to the concluding line with romantic descriptions of the various birds-‘And the
swift flicked through the breath of a violet’ and delivers a very contrasting and
effective end with the description of the crow- ‘spraddled head-down in the beach-
garbage, guzzling a dropped ice-cream.’ He invokes at very unromantic view of the
modern consumer world that has given up on the notions of morality and
consequently is left with a squalid hunger and lust like the crow. It is not a very
flattering depiction of contemporary society to say the least.

Considering Hughes is often praised for his poetry about war, ‘Crows Account of the
Battle’ is an apt piece for discussion with its brutal images of war and violence.
There is a sense of criticism on societies growing complacency towards killing and
the numb normality of war, as well as an underlying bitterness towards a God who
would let such atrocity occur. The crow is like the God figure watching from above,
allowing the bloodshed to occur and then relating his version of events as a means
of commenting on the mindlessness and atrocity of war. Critic Daniel Hoffman has
remarked “Hughes is the most haunted inheritor, of the sensibility shaped by the
appalling slaughter in World War I. His father was gassed in the trenches in that
war; growing up in its aftermath, Hughes has come to see the cosmos as a
battlefield. His is the world-view of a betrayed Fundamentalist, who, discovering that
“God” has no care for man’s fate, understands the universe to be governed not by
divine love but by power.”

Crow is a deeply painful book and is an expression of Hughes’ own agony. It

appears to be an attempt on Hughes’ part to identify him with a culture or society
which is unable to identify with the feminine. Hughes is possibly influenced by
Robert Graves’ White goddess in which he talks of how Western society undervalue
the feminine and disregard the myth and power of the mother. In ‘Revenge Fable’
Hughes implicates science and technology in the hostility of the feminine. He
highlights this hostility by juxtaposing it with nature. The poem is about the tree of
life and mans impulse to discover the truth behind it by means of ‘numbers and
equations and laws’: Scientific research tears nature apart and we are left with ‘rifles
and whisky and bored sleep’. Hughes critiques modernized mechanic warfare and
how society has become wrapped up in violence and lack of appreciation for the
mother figure through their obsession with technological advancement.

In many cases animals and their characteristics are assumed as both metaphors
and statements for a wider and more complicated message. His animal poetry is a
medium to indirectly vent his opinions on sociological and personal issues in an
aptly animalistic manner with regard to violence and the natural order of life, love
and death.

Brief Understanding
Ted Hughes's poetic career commenced its flourishing with the publication of The
Hawk in the Rain. His second volume, Lupercal, was published in 1960, and
Hughes positioned himself among the eminent modern poets of the 1960s. His
two volumes established him as a significant and innovative young poet of the
1960s. His subsequent volume, Wodwo, was initially published in 1967. It was
regarded as heralding the Crow theme. In Crow's fall, Hughes draws more than
one mythic references. It depicts central episode in the Winnebago Prickster
cycle which concentrates on egocentrism, and the Christian concept of pride (the
original sin). Hughes's Crow's fall draws upon two Hellenic myths. In the first
myth, during the war against the giants, Apollo transforms himself into a white
crow; and in the second myth Apollo becomes angry at the bird and transformed
it into a Crow was the favourite bird of Apollo.

"But the sun brightened - It brightened, and crow returned charred

black He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black Up

there' he managed, Where white is black and black is white. I

won" (Crow, P. 36)

The Crow is forbidden to fly longer with the other birds in ‘Crow and the Birds’.
His egocentric nature is shattered. He is refusing to accept his own limits as he
challenges the sun : a force far superior to a white crow. There is a clash
between crow and other birds. While other birds are singing and flying in joy,
crow is found "Straddled head - down in the beach - garbage, guzzling a dropped
ice cream". (Crow, P. 37)

The fall of the crows can also be observed in the poem ‘Crow Sickened’. Crow
is trying to separate himself by destroying himself. He diveds, he journeys,
challenges, and climbs with a glare, but he finally met fear. He shuts his eyes
sealed up with shock refusing to see. With his great strength he strikes. He tries
his best level, and falls horrified. The poem deals with how crow struggles against
the adverse situation. His appears to be the Winnebago Trickster.

Hughes writes not only on the Crow's adventure only but also on Crows psychic
adventure and journey of Crow. 'Oedipus Crow' and 'Song for a Phallus' are two
poems which illustrate best the Oedipus myth. 'Song for a Phallus' is a savegely
rendering of the Oedipus story.

Crow is a series of sufferings and spiritual adventures Crow passes through

initiations, encounters highly personalities and monsters. Crow is present at the
creation of world and he will be there at the end of world. His life and songs
display the history of world, going through Trickster cycle.

Ted Hughes's ‘Crow’s Fall’ is a vivid example of modern poetry, reflecting the
complexities of the modernist and postmodernist movements through its
innovative use of form, language, and themes. Ted Hughes, a prolific port has
combined various ancient myths and legends and formed a distinguished
philosophical framework of his own.

The composition employs free verse, a hallmark of contemporary poetry,

consisting of 17 lines of disparate lengths and an erratic metrical arrangement
that combines trochaic feet and spondees. Literary devices are utilised minimally,
with anaphora evident in lines 3–8 to enhance flow. The poem employs a
straightforward style, eschewing elaborate language.

He has amalgamated myths of some very ancient traditions, myths and tales of
the Eskimos, the Japanese, the North-American Indian tribes, the Persians, and
the lore of the Talmud and the Koran. Through. this poetry collection, Hughes
ridicules and satirizes the omnipotent God, or the creator of this universe. The
poet has the falsehood of man's biased beliefs. According to Ekbert Faas, an
American critic in these poems, the protagonist (who is a bird) shares the stage
with the Biblical creator, the serpent, and Adam and Eve and he encounters such
famous mythological personages as Proteus, Ulysses, Hercules, and Beowulf.

At the outset of the poem, the poet depicts not an ordinary but a mythological
crow of white feathers representing innocence and purity. One day crow thought
that the sun was blazing brighter than him. The Frustrated crow challenged the
sun in a battle of luminosity and lustre. Sun is signified here as Almighty or the
Super power of the creation. Just as Satan challenged against God's Throne,
crow, the symbol of satanic spirit defied the limits and tried to be as omnipotent
as the sun. The egoist crow was full of resolution that he could defeat the sun.

"He got his strength up flush and in full glitter

He clawed and fluffed his rage up"

Hughes, through his brilliant use of slant humor and bitter irony exaggerated this
section in a hyperbolic manner. His inner arrogance had turned him ignorant of
the fact that the sun could not be eclipsed. In Hughes humorous vision, the sun
seemed smaller than the crow the egoist of all egoists, hard-core solipsist,
selfish.

The Crow is lost in the dead pool of arrogance. He is aware of his hypocrite
extravaganza. He gets overwhelmed by the upsurge of high-vaulting ambition.
Aiming his beak towards the sun's dazzling centre, he cawed his battle cry

"He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre

He laughed himself to the centre of himself and attacked".

At the fag-end of the poem, the poet upholds the aftermath of Icarus. Again, the
sun shinned but the crow lost his incident myth transgressing one's limit vibrant
splendour.

"But the sun brightened-

It brightened, and crow returned charred black"

"He opened his mouth but what came out was charted

His blind, inscrutable ambition burnt his colour. But his arrogance knew no bound.
Finally the crow asserted "where white is black and black is white. I won".
(Chiasmus)

In deeper perspective, the ‘Crow' is nothing but the external manifestation of our
sub-conscious arrogant self. That ‘self' always tries to overpower others; wants to
rule the whole world, doesn't acknowledge the obedience or subjugation. Even
being failed, that Self tries to pro proclaim the victory. In Freudian term this is
called ‘Ego’. In Hughes’ diabolic interpretation, this can be analysed as the of
human being's exuberance of arrogance.

The Crow's choice to assault the sun, an ostensibly omnipotent entity, illustrates
the theme of hubris. This parallels literary works that examine the repercussions
of transgressing or defying the divine or natural order, such as Mary Shelley's
"Frankenstein" or the myth of Prometheus in Greek mythology.