The rain horse

Explore how Hughes gradually builds up a sense of menace in The Rain Horse. In ‘The Rain Horse’, Hughes reflects his emotions of disappointment, frustration and anger through imagery phrases of threat. He uses the horse as a symbolic source of his feelings and describes them in figures of speech. The return of the young man to the farm after twelve years made him a complete a stranger to the land which he didn’t accept.

The narrator manages to describe how this man is disillusioned, using the metaphor “ so he waited, trying to nudge the right feelings alive” – depicting his disappointment towards the land that he had not visited for so long , and this is conveyed in the following quote “ This land no longer recognized him , and he looked back at it coldly” The persona seems to have a strong sense of disconnection with the land surrounding him, and he appears with unease and frustration,” felt nothing but the dullness of feeling nothing, boredom and suddenly impatience” .

The narrator described well the young man’s mixed feelings of discomfort and frustration by using alliteration “ so old and stiff and stupid” which lead him to an ultimate anger towards himself “ anger against himself for blundering into this mud-trap ”. The phrase “ remembered or shouted at as a trespasser – deterred him” gives the idea of how the man did not have a good history with the farmer since he is mentioned as a trespasser. The writer used the horse to strengthen the idea of the land to the young man rejection .