Conflicting Perspectives - Hughes Essay Example

Together the works of Ted Hughes, Christine Jeffs and J.D Salinger combine to enhance an understanding of the concept of conflicting perspectives. The audience can see that there is a great deal of ubiquity in relation to Conflicting Perspectives. Ted Hughes’ poetry gives his account of a tumultuous part of his life whilst Christine Jeff’s film portrays a different point of view than that given by Hughes’. It is through looking at Salinger’s novel, that the role of the authorial voice in contrast to the protagonists can create a conflicting perspective between the protagonist and the audience. All these texts explore the concept of one person’s ‘truth’ in relation to another’s.
The collection of poems constituting Birthday letters was created by Ted Hughes over a twenty plus year period following the suicide of his early wife Sylvia Plath. The single, internal perspective offered by Hughes’ poetry was always brand to be contentious.
Ted Hughes poem, ‘The Shot’, gives his detailed perspective on Plath’s personality and her life in general. Hughes imposes the idea that Sylvia’s father was responsible for her instability through use of personification, “when his death touched the trigger.” Hughes talks of how Plath’s paranoid state caused destruction to the people she loved and whom loved her. Through the use of emotive language such as, ‘ricocheted,’ and, ‘the fury of a high intensity bullet,’ he describes Plath’s frenzied and insecure nature.
Hughes’ gives his point of view of his relationship and marriage with Plath through his poems, ‘The Minotaur,’ and ‘Sam.’ Through the use of animal imagery, Hughes conveys his belief that Plath was to blame for the marriage break up, ‘You strangled me, one giddy moment...under my feet to trip me.” (Sam). Hughes’ feels that it was Sylvia’s fragility, outbursts of anger, “Mahogany table top you smashed,” (Minotaur) and paranoia that destroyed the marriage. By removing himself from the situation through the use of