Theology by Ted Hughes

"No, the serpent did not

Seduce Eve to the apple.
All that's simply
Corruption of the facts.
Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.
The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise Smiling to hear
God's querulous calling."

Crow's Fall by Ted Hughes

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."

A Childish Prank

Man's and woman's bodies lay without souls

Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert
On the flowers of Eden.
God pondered.
The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep.
Crow laughed.
He bit the Worm, God's only son,

Into two writhing halves.

He stuffed into man the tail half
With the wounded end hanging out.
He stuffed the head half headfirst into woman
And it crept in deeper and up
To peer out through her eyes
Calling it's tail-half to join up quickly, quickly
Because O it was painful.
Man awoke being dragged across the grass.
Woman awoke to see him coming.
Neither knew what had happened.
God went on sleeping.
Crow went on laughing.
Ted Hughes

Reconstructing Eden: Comparing Hughes' "Theology" and

"Crow's First Lesson"
Ted Hughes, unreligious as he is, uses "blasphemous" imagery and "heretical" rhetorical in much of his
poetry. In a few of his poems, he even recreates biblical accounts, forming them into (perhaps not antibiblical, but) almost "de-biblical" accounts.
For instance, in "Theology," Hughes retells the story of "the Fall," which the speaker claims is "simply /
Corruption of the facts" (3-4). In the biblical depiction, the serpent tempted Eve to the apple (who ate),
who then tempted Adam (who also ate), all three of whom were found by God, naked and ashamed, and
then cursed by God. Hughes' version, however, is not slightly altered:
Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.
The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise-Smiling to hear
God's querulous calling. (5-12)
The Bible tells the Fall of man as the separation from God due to sin, and "Theology" also tells of a
separation from God, but of a different kind. Here there is no sin, no "seduc[tion]" (2), no temptation
whatsoever. The serpent merely ate the woman who had eaten the man who had eaten the apple: these

are "the facts" (4). There is nothing else to it. Hughes expresses here that mankind has been separated
from God from the beginning: there is no "Paradise" (1o) to which we can or should return. The place we
find ourselves is "the dark intestine" (4), and not due to sin, but due to the facts, and God is a bumbling
fool, several levels removed from us, in this garden we cannot reach, and in which we are nowhere to be
found.
The themes of "Theology" (the poem which, in part, inspired Hughes' book, Crow) carry over into many of
the poems of Crow. "Crow's First Lesson," for example, is another sort of reconstruction of the Fall,
another version even further removed from the original story. In this rendering, God is attempting to teach
Crow to say the word, "love." According to the Bible, the purpose for which all things were created is love:
to love God and to love one another. So God, after this fashion, attempts to assimilate Crow into that
created structure: but Crow is unable.
"Love," said God. "Say, Love."
Crow gaped, and the white shark crashed into the sea
And went rolling downwards, discovering its own depth. (2-3)
From the beginning, Crow can neither receive nor recapitulate this notion of "love." Instead, when he
opens his mouth, voiceless descriptions of death come flowing out: vicious predators of the sea and
disease-carrying insects, "Zoom[ing] out and down" (7). God attempts a third and final time to teach poor
Crow, and this is where the most obvious connection to the Fall appears:
Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and
Man's bodiless prodigous head
Bulbped out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,
Jabbering protest-And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.
And woman's vulva dropped over man's neck and tightened.
The two struggled together on the grass.
God struggled to part them, cursed, wept-Crow flew guiltily off. (10-18)
In this way, Hughes completely deconstructs both the story of man's creation and man's curse. Rather
than God making man at all, man and woman were both "retched" out of Crow's innards, vomitted out of
Crow's dark, distorted, dismembered, and defeated attempt to say, "Love." Crow who cannot create love,
created man and woman, and in this, they were borne in strife and forced to love in the only way that
Crow's own "dark intestine" can conceive: struggling forever. The sexual imagery of "woman's vulva"
tightening around "man's neck" depicts sex as the concrete signifier of this struggle, as well as the
perpetuation of that love (through reproduction) thereafter.
God, helpless to part them (as He was helpless to find them in "Theology"), gives up: He curses and
weeps. God's curse here is not from the position of sovereign authority, as the biblical account described,
but from the position of submissive futility. He breaks down and cries because He cannot make love (pun
intended) in them as He desires, for the love from which they were borne was from the convulsive
stomache of the Crow. "Crow," then "flew guiltily off" (18), knowing he had made a mistake (mankind), but
unable either to remedy the situation or to console the now grieving God. So Crow leaves God behind, off
to find something other than God or Love by which to define himself.

---------------------------------Social Issues and Creation Stories in Ted Hughes' Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow

There are many mythological stories that exist in this age. Within these different myths, there are many
answers to how our world was created. Yet, one must become open-minded to other myths that do not
necessarily discuss creation; Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow can be seen to fall into this
category. This collection of Ted Hughes' poetry is intertwined with social issues and creation stories.
Throughout this collection, the poems not only involve Classical and Christian related ideas they also
include several twentieth century advancements.
The myths that Hughes creates have the central character as the crow. In the book Myth in the Poetry
of Ted Hughes, Hirschberg gives a brief statement of how crows are viewed in different mythologies, "In
folk mythology the crow is an animal figure predominantly associated with the twin motifs of death and
guilt, a stark figure who embodies boldness, intelligence, adaptability to change and a twisted vitality"
(126). This description is widely evident throughout Ted Hughes' collection. Crow goes through many
phases and meditations. Among the topics found in Crow are views of religion, human actions, and
destruction.
Throughout Crow, there are many references to Christianity. Yet, in each poem that includes this
topic, the original stories are altered to give a new style of myth. "A Childish Prank" is one of the poems
that Hughes begins altering the original biblical references.
"A Childish Prank" is a poem about a malicious trick that Crow plays on Adam and Eve in the garden
of Eden. This poem is about Adam and Eve lying in Eden without souls. God, however, is presented as
indecisive, sleepy, and incompetent, since the problem of giving them a soul was so great that (from the
poem) "it dragged him asleep" (line 5). Seeing that God was asleep, Crow laughs and decides to play a
trick on Adam, Eve, and God, not knowing that it could cause harm. For the trick, Crow gives Adam and
Eve an animal lust, which Crow finds humorous, yet God is not awakened by this "prank." Still, as
Hirschberg mentions, this poem gives a new perspective on God: "God in 'A Childish Prank' is portrayed
as he will be in most of the Crow poems... [He is seen as] a nave bumpkin, erring and unaware" (76).

Another poem that directly focuses on Crow's 'relationship' with God is "Crow Communes." Crow, being
curious, desires to speak with God about his existence. Of course, when Crow arrives, God is asleep;
Crow, continues to ask questions but "God lay, agape, a great carcase" (line 1). Crow then takes a bite of
God's shoulder hoping that it will give him the answers to his questions by giving him more wisdom. Yet,
Crow does not become enlightened by it, instead he becomes "Half-illumined." One reason that this can
be explained is by Hirschberg: "God is described [by Hughes] as

a snoring mountain and it's hardly surprising that Crow should become less illumined through the
ingestion of such a bovine divinity"(84).
Yet, God is not the only part of the Christian religion distorted in Crow ; Hughes also gives a new
perspective on Jesus Christ. The main poem about Christ is "The Contender." The main aspect of this
poem is that instead of a self-sacrificing Christ, Crow sees a self-centered, stubborn hero. This idea is
further explained: "... [Christ's] purpose in Crow's account in coming to the world was not, despite Old
Testament literature, to move mountains and free the Jewish people. This poem instead presents Christ
as an adamant, self-contained entity who ignores the very people who considered him their saviour"
(Hirschberg 92). Although Christ suffers tremendously, nothing truly positive for people comes from it. It
appears as though Christ merely suffers great pain in order to convince himself of his own strength.
Besides religion, Hughes also addresses society in Crow. In the poem "A Disaster," Hughes relates
both society and religion with the power of words. In this poem, Hughes relates words with a type of
disease that spreads like wildfire across the land. It slowly destroys humans, cities, and the environment.
One occurence of this is as follows:
The word oozed its way, all mouth,
Earless, eyeless.
He saw it sucking the cities
Like the nipples of a sow
Drinking out all the people
Till there were none left,
All digested by the word. (lines 1-7)
This excerpt is a prime example of how religious doctrines or political propaganda is used against people.
The last line of the excerpt is the most easily understood. It shows that people do not 'take-in' the word,
instead, the word swallows them and 'collects' them into its message. Some examples of how this has
happened in the past are the Crusades (religion) and Nazi Germany (political propaganda). In the
Crusades, people followed the word of God (through priests). In Nazi Germany, people followed the word
out of nationalism and fear.
In Crow, Hughes also concentrates on inner-turmoil which exists between Crow and humans.

"Oedipus Crow" and "Crowego" are two poems realating to this conflict involving issues of pride, ego, fear,
and violence.
In "Oedipus Crow," the message to Crow is that of warning him not to forget his origins. Hirschberg
describes the concept of the poem in the following: " 'Oedipus Crow' is a cautionary tale which alerts
Crow to the tendency within himself from which Oedipus suffered: Pride" (94). He continues by
describing why Death toys with him during the warning, "One after another he [Crow] rejects the forces
which guides his life as soon as he perceives them to be threatening to his freedom" (94). The examples
of this can be seen throughout the poem; with every time constraint thrown at him, Crow finds some way
of evading it. A few things he does to avoid being constrained include biting off his own leg (line 4) and
flying away from his mother (line 7).
This poem also relates to the human struggle for freedom. Throughout life, humans wish to be free
and not to have a set fate they cannot escape. Yet, however a person tries, he/she cannot escape forever
and death always seems to give warnings when humanity becomes too sure of itself.
The other poem that concentrates heavily on Crow and man's egocentricities is "Crowego." In this
poem, though, Crow feeds on man's ego projections in order to strengthen his own ego. Crow decides to
gorge himself with heroes when they are no longer heroic. In the poem, Crow steps in (like the scavenger
he is), catches the heroes, and "devours them after they have failed to answer the culture's demands for
which they were created to satisfy (e.g. Ulysses was the last hero from the heroic age of Greece; Beowulf
was the last pre-Christian culture hero). Heroes represent the collective ego of mankind and man will
always need these heroic projections" (Hirschberg 104). In this poem, Crow notices that society is
overwhelmed with myths. If humankind wishes to gain self-identity, he/she should not focus on modeling
themselves on ancient heroes. This is seen in that Crow feels he does not need to model himself on
others; he is his own hero. Still, since Crow is his own hero, he feels he has no fear-- until he comes face
to face with himself.
The poem in which Crow comes face to face with himself is entitled "Crow Sickened." In this poem
Crow becomes fearful of something he does not know. This causes him to begin feeling ill and to start
searching for the source. the second stanza shows what Crow discovers: "Unwinding the world like a ball
of wool / [He] Found the last end tied around his own finger" (lines 7-8). Not understanding this, Crow
continues to search. In the end however, he finds out that his greatest enemy is himself.
The fear that he acknowledges is similar to humans. Although we may fear some people, our greatest
enemy is found within ourselves. The freedom from fear cannot occur when fear is yourself; so, like Crow,
humanity is imprisoned by themselves.

There are many fears found in man, and these fears often lead to violence. Violence is very common
in Crow and there are several poems that relate to this action. Within the realms of violence, there are
many levels. In Crow, two violence-related poems are "Crow's Account of the Battle" and "In Laughter."

"Crow's Account of the Battle" is about war, the most violent thing that can occur. In this poem, Crow
describes what he sees, and the descriptions show all of the pain war causes. Crow sees the battles and
within the following lines sums up what war is--pure violence:

Then everybody wept,

Or sat, too exhausted to weep,
Or lay too hurt to weep.
And when the smoke cleared, it became clear
This had happened too often before
And was going to happen too often in the future
And happened too easily. (lines 11-17)

This poem also tells how science interferes with civilization during war. Science makes people
unemotional and this poem includes examples of this. In stanza two, an example of this can be seen:
"From sudden traps of calculus, / Theorems wrenched men in two." Hirschberg further describes this as
"the ability to repress feelings that might arise at the death of others [which] means that man can kill
through Science, dissociate himself from the act of murder and in the process transform war into a merely
haphazard concommitant of existence" (81).

Within humans, there is one emotion that is unique--pleasure. This emotion is strange because it can
happen in several ways; "In Laughter" is a poem about a more sadistic form of the action which relates to
violence. The point of this poem is the human ability to laugh (an expression related to pleasure) at other

peoples' tragedies with fascination instead of sorrow. This poem gives some examples of how sadistic
humans can be. Among the examples Hughes utilizes are car wrecks, airplane crashes, and people
being hurt. Hughes' examples show that humans use laughter to deal with stressful situations.
Hirschberg also reaffirms this: "What we find funny is that towards which we are at least partly sadistic.
Even though we know it's terrible to find such and ultimately even violence becomes tiring and provokes
our indifference" (97). There is an old saying which relates to mankind's experience with violence-"violence begets violence." Of course this saying is true, but when violence continues it can lead to
destruction. In Crow, there are several poems that relate to destruction and the apocalypse; two of these
poems are "Revenge Fable" and "Notes for a Little Play."

In "Revenge Fable," Crow is again an observer of human stupidity. This poem focuses on the
destruction of the environment. This poem tells the story about a man who, through science and
numbers, destroys Mother Earth. He does this by exploiting (through greed) natural resources that were
given to us by Mother Earth. This poem gives a new twist to myths by incorporating twentieth century
inventions into the story. It also brings to light environmental problems we have today. Humankind
continues to take advantage of Nature's gifts until they are depleted. Yet with this, humanity runs into a
problem; Hirschberg describes this idea by stating, "In the process of exploiting the earth for her material
wealth and beating her into submission man has undermined and poisoned his own existence.
Unwittingly, he has cut his own throat" (110). Humankind has "poisoned" itself because existence is
intertwined with that of the earth, and in the last line of the poem he (Crow representing humans)is
punished by having "His head [fall] off like a leaf."