Detailed analysis by Claire's Notes of 'Roe-Deer' by Ted Hughes
Cambridge iGCSE: Ted Hughes
"Roe-Deer" by Ted Hughes captures a brief, magical encounter between the speaker and a pair of roe deer in a snowy landscape. The poem describes the serene beauty and ethereal quality of the deer as they appear unexpectedly, creating a moment of stillness and wonder. Themes of nature's mystery, the unexpected moments of connection with wildlife, and the transient beauty of such encounters are prominent. Hughes' vivid imagery and contemplative tone convey the delicate, almost dreamlike atmosphere of the scene, highlighting the enchantment and tranquillity found in the natural world, and the fleeting nature of such experiences.
Roe-deer by Ted Hughes
In the dawn-dirty light, in the biggest snow of the year
Two blue-dark deer stood in the road, alerted.
They had happened into my dimension
The moment I was arriving just there.
They planted their two or three years of secret deerhood
Clear on my snow-screen vision of the abnormal
And hesitated in the all-way disintegration
And stared at me. And for some lasting seconds
I could think the deer were waiting for me
To remember the password and sign
That the curtain had blown aside for a moment
And there where the trees were no longer trees, nor the road a road
The deer had come for me.
Then they ducked through the hedge, and upright they rode their legs
Away downhill over a snow-lonely field
Towards tree dark - finally
Seeming to eddy and glide and fly away up
Into the boil of big flakes.
The snow took them and soon their nearby hoofprints as well
Revising its dawn inspiration
Back to the ordinary.
My poetry videos all have the same structure: I start by putting the poem into its historical and biographical context where this enhances its understanding and give a short summary of the poem itself; I then look at the poem in its entirety, picking out structural features, such as metre (rhythm), any rhyming and patterns in language which the poet uses; I finish by going through the poem on a line-by-line basis, giving definitions of words and offering an interpretation of the poet’s words with justification. Most of the terminology I use (in green) is provided with a definition below, so even if you haven’t come across it before, you should still be able to understand the points I am making.
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I have been an English teacher and private tutor for more than 20 years.
Please note that any literature analysis is highly subjective and may disagree with analysis by another person. All interpretations are valid if they can be justified by reference to the text. This interpretation is my own: it is not exhaustive and there are alternatives!
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