The validity of an individual’s perspective on the truth regarding situations, events and personalities throughout their lifetime is subjective.
Conflicting perspectives arise when two individuals experience the same situations, events or personalities, but take meaning from these experiences in opposing ways. Because of these contradictory views, we –as the audience – must challenge our assessment of the truth.
We can do this by analysing the viewpoints presented by Ted Hughes’ confessional poems, The Minotaur and Red from his anthology The Birthday Letters (published 1998) and the feature article, Face of a People Smuggler by Fenella Souter, featured in Good Weekend (April 21, 2012). Through our analysis, we are able to separate fact from fallacy.
The ‘truths’ presented by Ted Hughes’ The Minotaur are questionable because of the context in which Hughes released this poem. The Minotaur was published in 1998, after the controversial suicide of Sylvia Plath in 1963, and much of the blame for her death was placed upon Hughes. Feminist supporters of Plath especially vilified Hughes and upheld Plath as a ‘martyr to a misogynistic husband’. Through The Minotaur, Hughes aims to shift the general public’s perspective of Plath from the ‘martyr’ to ‘monster’.
Hughes does this by introducing Plath in the first stanza as a paranoid, irrational and violent woman, incapable of considering anyone except herself, as she smashes his “mahogany table-top” which undoubtedly held sentimental value as it was his “mother’s heirloom sideboard … mapped with the scars of [his] whole life”. The strong imagery presented within this stanza is amplified by utilising the onomatopoeic word “smashed”, which has the effect of enhancing the reader’s imagination, allowing Hughes to shape and distort the manner in which he depicts Plath’s character.
