18 pages • 36 minutes read
Wind
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Literary Devices
Figurative Language
In "Wind," the wind and the house are the most prominent metaphors; both are examples that function as both literal and figurative entities. Hughes makes considerable use of metaphor and simile to describe the way violent wind feels and sounds, which personifies its power. Against nature, the wind “crashes” the woods (Line 2), “booms” (Line 2) and “drums (Line 12) the hills, “stampedes” (Line 3) and “quivers” (Line 13) the fields, and makes the “stones cry out” (Line 24). It “flings” one bird (Line 15) away and buckles another “like an iron bar” (Line 16), and it “dents” (Line 11) the speaker’s eyeballs.
Similarly, the house serves as a metaphor for the human couple in the poem. It is shaken to its foundation after having been “far out at sea all night” (Line 1) which is a metaphor. The wind threatens to “shatter” (Line 18) the house like a “fine green goblet” (Line 17), and causes its very “roots” to “move” (Line 22), likening the house to one of the trees. While the poem ends with the couple inside the house and safe from the prevailing winds outside, neither storm is abating.
Other prominent examples of figurative language include the chaos and lack of control shown by the flexing “lens of a mad eye” (Line 8), the “tent” hills barely retrained by a "guyrope" (Line 12), and the “great” (Line 19), “blazing” (Line 21) fire that is a literal fire as well as a metaphor for of the couple’s discord.
Enjambment and Caesura
The tension in “Wind” is underscored by the heavy use of enjambment—when a line does not end with end stop punctuation and is continued in the subsequent line or lines—which appears in every stanza except the last. Using enjambment highlights the way in the wind is relentless, wild, and seemingly unending. The first two stanzas are comprised of a single sentence that effectively sets the mood. By the fourth stanza, the enjambment becomes more effective—especially in the stanza break between Stanzas Four and Five and the line break between Stanza Five’s third and fourth lines.
The poem contains only six sentences; besides the final sentence which ends the poem, only Stanza Two contains a full end stop with a sentence concluding at the line’s end. However, Hughes uses two caesuras—metrical breaks in the words—that effectively highlight the meaning. The first occurs in the second stanza, in which the semicolon after “Till day rose” (Line 5) signals an alteration in the speaker’s tone as well as a brief respite from the weather. The second occurs at the end of the second line of the third stanza, when the speaker states “Once I looked up—“(Line 10), and the reader is invited to also take a pause to look up.
Diction
The unexpected diction (word choice) characteristic of a Hughes poem is on full display in “Wind”—particularly in the violent, powerful verbs that describe the wind’s action upon the natural and human world. Concision of evocative language is evidenced in the “blinding wet” rain (Line 4), the wind’s “Blade-light” (Line 7), and the fate of the hapless gull which “bent like an iron bar slowly” (Line 16). The unexpected diction choices of “brunt” (Line 11), “grip” (Line 19), “entertain” (Line 20), and the plural “horizons” (Line 24) add to the freshness of the poetic imagery and the consistency of the speaker’s tone.
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