Diving further into Hughes and Plath some specific symbols and themes seem to overlap.  Death, time, and animalistic nature seem to be very prevalent topics.  I am very interested in the power struggle that both seem to deal with.

Hughes seems to be reminding us that we are all animals at a basic level, and because we are animals we strive for power.  It is part of the chain of life, eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.  Hughes is able to bring out our animalistic qualities by forcing the reader to use their senses. In Egghead he even acknowledges that we tend not to see or hear things unless we choose to.  We peek through our fingers so we don’t really see, or tune out what we do not want to hear.  By forcing the senses he is able to put focus on things that we usually wouldn’t. In Thought Fox, we are forced to smell the hot stink of the fox.  In Pike we are forced to see the murderous nature of the fish.  The poem that really encapsulates this power view to me was Hawk Roosting.  The hawk was created to kill.  It is his nature, and no one questions it.

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The hawk knows that he has achieved ultimate power because since his beginning his nature was known and accepted.  His animalistic nature defines him, and he is happy with that definition.

Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this

Plath on the other hand seems to link animal experiences to that of art or folklore.  Her animals die at the hands of humans. In Rhyme, the goose’s throat is slit at the end because that is what had to happen for the human to get the golden eggs.  In the Goring, she finds the act of bull fighting almost boring, as if these people were just going through well rehearsed motions. Art only happens when animistic nature overrides human power. It was only art when the bull killed the picador.  That act of defiance caused a disturbance in the force of human nature vs. animalistic nature.