Conflicting Perspectives - J.Kim

In texts, composers convey their own perspective, through the choice of stylistic features and language, to their audience particularly in situations of conflict. Ted Hughes in his collection of poetry, Birthday Letters, conveys a personal perspective on his tempestuous relationship with Sylvia Plath. Through the evocative, emotional and vivid imagery the poems come to life. His masterful skills as an evocative poet allow the audience his personal insight into his journey with Plath thus challenging his audience to question and criticise dominant ideologies. Through the close study of Ted Hughes poetry The Minotaur and Red in Birthday Letters (1998), Sylvia Plath’s Daddy (1962) and The Scream (1893) by Edvard Munch, it is evident that through the acts of representation each composer can shape meaning and influence the responses of their readers. The acts of representation demonstrate that depending on the subjectivity and bias of the composer conflicting perspectives can vary even within their own works.

The reading audience should recognise that language is manipulative and that there are always silences, gaps and other conflicting perspectives. Hughes demonstrates his perspective towards his destructive relationship with Plath through The Minotaur. Violence is evident in the very opening when Plath ‘smashed’ Hughes’ ‘mother’s heirloom sideboard – Mapped with the scars of [his] whole life’. Here Hughes is expressing the damage deep inside him than the physical destruction by Plath; that he too has childhood ‘scars’. Hughes suggests that Plath’s over-reaction and violence reflects her unstable mind by the word ‘demented’ revealing his helplessness, frustration and incomprehension. However, Hughes also shows regret and guilt for encouraging her to explore her physical and emotional intensity further in her poems which he thinks it had probably led to her suicide; ‘The goblin snapped his fingers. So what had I given him?’ Juxtaposition of ideas in the penultimate...