View of a Pig

Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes
Born 17 August 1930 South Yorkshire
English poet and children's writer
Attended Cambridge universitystudied English but changed in his 3rd
year to archaeology and
anthropology.
Main theme used within his poems is
nature.

Context
He joined the Royal Air Force after school and then went to
Cambridge University on an academic scholarship. He graduated
in 1954. In 1956 he met the young American Sylvia Plath,
renowned now for her novel The bell jar and they married a few
months later. They had two children but later separated. Hughes
left Plath for a woman called Assia Wevill. Plath tragically killed
herself less then a year later by gassing herself and Hughes'
public reputation was brought into question. Hughes stopped
writing for years and instead spent time editing and publishing
Plath's work.
Wevill lived with Hughes and looked after his children. Incredibly,
she also killed herself, and their only daughter, in a manner
similar to Plath.
Hughes married Carol Orchard in 1970 and they remained
together until his death. In 1984, Hughes was named Poet
Laureate (the Queen's poet). He died of cancer in Devon in 1998
and his ashes were cast on Dartmoor.

The poem Interpretation 1

About the finality of death-once it
occurs every remnant of who they
once were is gone. Hughes depicts
the pig as merely a weight
comparing it to a sack of wheat,
less than lifeless in order to show
that life is completely gone, so
nothing is left.

Interpretation 2
View of a Pig is also about how people
learn to think through problems and
inconveniences to end up finding
acceptance. The poem runs through all
the frustrating steps of a new problem
and yet finds sympathy and acceptance
at the end. With some thought the once
frustrating encounter with the pig leads
to sympathy when remembering the
being once had earthly pleasure.

A PIGS
LIFE

Around 15 million pigs are slaughtered for food every year in the UK.
The majority are raised in filthy and cramped factory farms. They are
denied
almost everything that makes life worth living for pigs such as playing,
foraging building nests, or wallowing in mud. They never feel fresh air or
see sunlight.
Breeding sows are forced to produce as many piglets as possible in a
repeated cycle of impregnation, pregnancy and birth. A week before they
are due to give birth, sows are moved to a farrowing crate a restrictive
stall built from metal and concrete that is only a little bit bigger than the
sows themselves. They are unable to stretch, turn around or move freely.
At three or four weeks old, piglets are taken away from their mothers
and placed in groups in barren pens. A high protein diet makes them grow
very big, very fast. This causes painful leg and joint problems.
The unnatural conditions also lead to heart and breathing problems, plus
infections of the gut, skin, brain and nervous system. In an attempt to
fight off disease, pigs are routinely fed a cocktail of drugs.
Although they have a natural lifespan of 15 years, pigs are typically
slaughtered at only 3-6 months. They are usually stunned with electric
tongs applied to the side of the head, designed to make them unconscious
before their throats are cut. Studies have shown that pigs are often not