With close reference to up to 40 lines of verse, analyse how Hughes presents animal life.
David Loffman
The presentation of the otter in the poem ‘An Otter’ by Hughes is a complex one. The otter is neither a creature of the land or the sea. He is an amphibian animal and therefore connected to both elements and contains physical features of both. The otter is presented as an alien and other worldly creature, elusive and unknowable. And this sense of exile is emphasised as Hughes’s describes the Otter by what it is not as much as by what it is. The final image of a dead otter seems to emphasise the creature’s otherness and strangeness.
This otherness of the otter is one of the key features of Hughes presentation. This is established in a variety of ways throughout the poem. In the first stanza the otter is described as ‘neither fish nor beast’. If it is neither then we are prompted to ask, what is it? The use of assonance helps create emphasis here.
The Otter is presented as lost and an exile, yearning for home. The simile ‘like a king in hiding’ expresses this strongly. There are biblical connotations in this image. The connotations of ‘king’ bring up many thoughts of the otter as heroic and powerful. But these are undermined by the verb ‘hiding’ that links the king to ideas of weakness, cowardliness and fear.
One way of presenting the otter is to identify it with other creatures that live in water. The opening phrase of the poem immediately links it to water creatures where Hughes writes of the otter’s ‘Underwater eyes,…’ . This phrase is used to show the reader that the dominant element for the otter is water. The phrase emphasises the otter’s oneness and connectedness to this element. It seems perfectly at home here. This is similar to the presentation of the pike in Hughes poem Pike. Both creatures belong to this landscape. The pond Hughes fishes in is as ‘deep as England’ and Hughes sees the otter as a ‘legend of himself’. There is something elemental and eternal in these creatures.
The second phrase develops this connection with water by comparing the otter to ‘an eel’s
oil of water body’. Here Hughes focuses on the texture and the colour of the otter. The noun ‘oil’ is a dense fluid and may appear part solid in its gluppiness. The otter is presented as elusive and hard to identify. This is also emphasised with the use of the colour black and also the reference to the otter’s metaphorically ‘melting’ back into the water in the second stanza. But the comparison to an eel makes the otter strange. Like otters, eels are mysterious creatures. For example they look like snakes but live in the sea.
Perhaps the line that most identifies the otter as linked to water comes in the first stanza where it is described with ‘webbed feet and long ruddering tail’. The premodifying adjectives ‘webbed’ and ‘ruddering’ clearly link the otter to a water environment. Webbed feet are useful on land and in water. ‘Ruddering’ is a strong and powerful word that Hughes has made up himself. He has turned a noun into a verb and this makes the word stand out and interesting to readers. The strong and repeated consonants ‘r’ and ‘d’ help create this strength. The word is also associated with boats and steering. Hughes is using adjectives to really give detail to the portrait he is creating.
The otter is also presented is as a victim in relation to the world of humans. In the second stanza Hughes presents the otter surviving ‘hounds and vermin-poles’. This is probably a reference to game keeping. A game keeper is usually a man that manages areas of land for breeding deer or fowl for hunting. Dogs are used to hunt unwanted animals described here as ‘vermin’. The word ‘vermin’ is often associated with pests who are animals that carry disease. By using the word ‘vermin’, readers can associate the otter to the way society generally perceives them – as pests to be destroyed.
The otter also appears out of place in the human world. Although it can ‘gallop’ over fields which presents the otter as well adapted to living on land. It’s described as ‘Walloping up roads’, the verb ‘walloping’ suggests clumsiness and awkwardness on the flat tarmac of a road. The word also reminds us of the word ‘gallops’ used earlier in the poem. It rhymes with the latter word but this is juxtaposed here. The word is now a rather old fashioned word that means hit or strike. It has connotations of violence and therefore perhaps reflects the power and strength of the otter.
Physical strength is another way Hughes presents the otter. At the end of the poem Hughes describes the otter having a ‘Big trout muscle’ and a heart ‘beat thick’ the trout is a British fresh water fish able to withstand the problems of surviving an English winter. The penultimate image of the otter is of an animal that can
‘take stolen hold
On a bitch otter in a field full
Of nervous horses,’
The image here is of a ruthless, instinct driven creature. It’s an unattractive and aggressive picture full of life and strength and fertility. And it takes risks. What helps create this strong picture is the assonance of ‘stolen hold’, ‘otter’ and ‘horse’. This phonetic technique creates a strong harmony and this helps reinforce the image. Secondly the use of alliteration in ‘field full’ also helps generate a powerful picture of the otter.
However these vivid images of life are strongly contrasted with the final two line image of ‘reverts to nothing at all,/ To this long pelt over the back of a chair.’ This image presents the otter as dead and transformed into a thing used by humans. The word ‘pelt’ means the fur of the otter. The context has also changed from the wild outdoor setting to a domestic one. In this final image the otter is identified and reduced to its human value. This reminds us of the poem View of a Pig by Hughes. As in this poem Hughes contrasts the living pig full of movement and sound, reducing it to its constituent parts tallow and lard.
But even in this final image of death the otter remains hidden, strange and unknown.
1000 words excluding quotations and title.
