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The Thought-Fox

The Thought-Fox is an omniscient recitation written in the first person by the speaker. He evokes the stillness and mystery of a forest during midnight. The poem has an effect of a dramatic monologue and the speaker employed the use of hook lines to enable the reader to discover what is inside the forest. The major claim is about the darkness in the forest thus the speaker use imageries to emphasize his point. The use of personal, conversational tone, which reveals the sensory imagery of the changing rhythms and alliteration with perfection enables the reader understand the theme.

The poem has twenty-four lines, and it is divided into six stanzas. It draws a correspondence between the thought especially on the poetic composition and a fox. He used the images of night and fox in his poem to reveal his theme of writing. What the speaker imagines is not the fox but the midnight which is the witching moment of the night especially when human beings are fast asleep. He starts with ‘I imagine’ to reveal the theme of loneliness in the dark forest at midnight. The thought fox is a suggestion of the main and central theme of the poem.

The speaker employs diverse use of rhyme, alliteration, rhythm, and diction in order to bring out a clear, central theme of the poem. First, he uses conversational rhythmic tone in order to bring out clear the imagery and changing tones with time and space. The auditory and visual impression of the poem moves throughout the poem. The ‘dark hole’ is a metaphor that takes the reader to the rhythmic tension. Secondly, the speaker used alliteration because some words in the poem begin with the same sound such as ‘till, with a sudden, sharp hot stink of fox’ (Hughes, stanza 6, line 1) ‘and it enter the dark hole of the dead’(Hughes, stanza 6, line 2). This enables the reader to improve the skills of pronunciation of letters clearly thus advancing in reading skills. Lastly, the speaker used rhyming words such as ‘darkness’ and loneliness’ and this makes the reader combine the rhythm in enhancing the rhyming words. From, this, the reader may create the picture of coldness outside the darkness. Besides, one may create a picture of someone being alone in the dark thus the speaker quotes ‘something else is alive’ (Hughes, stanza 1, line 2). Additionally, the speaker used diction in referring to the linguistic styles and the vocabulary of words used in the poem. For instance, in stanza four, line 2, the speaker quotes ‘warily a lame’. Here, warily means cautiously and this helps the reader to improve his or her vocabulary.