The Importance of the Poems in The Shot by Ted Hughes

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The Shot was written by Ted Hughes, describing his late ex-wife Sylvia Plath, and is included in the Birthday Letters collection which focuses on Hughes' tempestuous relationship with Plath. The Shot appears to be to a large extent characteristic of the collection, with regards to style and concerns. Ultimately the collection deals with the idea that all our adult problems can be traced to our childhood experiences. The poems in the collection typically address Plath, using mostly past tense, as Hughes reminisces about Plath and their life together.

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In The Shot, as with most of the poems in the 'Birthday Letters' collection, Hughes talks directly to Plath. He uses pronouns such as “You” to address her, so that this poem, as with the rest of the collection serves as a form of psychological release, in order to let out all his feelings that he felt towards Plath. The Shot's use of the pronoun “I” makes the poem more personal and intimate, as it reveals Hughes true feelings towards Plath.

The use of first person and second person is used in nearly every other poem of the collection. There are only two poems in 'Birthday Letters' that don't speak to Plath directly. In A Picture of Otto, Hughes talks to Sylvia Plath's late father, Otto Plath. "You never could have released her", he says to Otto Plath. In The Dogs are Eating Your Mother, Hughes talks about Plath to their children.

Like every poem in the collection, The Shot is written in past tense.

This allows Hughes looks back on their relationship, with the benefit of hindsight and retrospect so the poems in the collection are more like memories, "You saw your whole life". The Shot, like many of the other poems in Birthday Letters, is written in free-verse. Conversational in tone, the use of enjambment, such as "shed one foot-pound Of kinetic energy" implies a continuous flow of memories.

The Shot's atmosphere of violence is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Throughout the poem, there is an extended metaphor that compares Plath to a bullet. This is reinforced by language, image and pace. For example, the onomatopoeic "ricocheted" in "You ricocheted

The length of your Alpha career" sustains the image of Plath as a missile. In Black Coat, Plath is the sniper with Hughes in her "telescopic sights"; in The Shot she is the bullet, honing onto its target, destroying everything in its path. The title of the poem, "The Shot" echoes the death of Plath's father which caused her to fall into a manic depression and spiral out of control; "when his death touched the trigger". After Plath met Hughes, she took the anger she felt towards her father out on him, "Till your real target Hid behind me. Your Daddy". The fusion of the two characters of Hughes and Plath's father is also mentioned in Black Coat: "Set up like a decoy". This further shows that Hughes is just a distraction for Plath's father.

The structure of The Shot is similar to the majority of the poems in the rest of the collection. The poem is divided into stanzas; each stanza is a different length, the second one is longer and the pace is faster, aided by the use of enjambment, "...events long your flightpath But inside your...", mirroring the journey of the bullet. This irregularity throughout the poem is typical of all bar four of the poems in Birthday Letters, for example A Picture of Otto has six regular quatrains which is very unusual, adding to the formality of the poem as Hughes is addressing Plath's father. In her book, Ariel's Gift, the critic Erica Wagner describes The Shot as having a "jerky ballistic rhythm as of squeezed off rounds thudding into a target."

The use of different line lengths, for example "The length of your Alpha career With the fury", create a broken and unsettled rhythm and the rhyme scheme is non-existent, encapsulating the tempestuous irregular nature of Plath's life. The mention of Plath's suicide attempt, “Where you seemed to have side-swiped concrete" conforms to most of the other poems in the collection, such as The Tender Place where he also discusses it with the reference to "bolt-hole basement." The entire collection centres around this event.

The use of caesura, is typical of the poems in Birthday Letters as Hughes uses it to emphasises Plath's need to put her faith in a male figure and replace her father, "Your worship needed a god". This desire, intensified by the use of “infatuation", makes Plath appear obsessive and intense.

The Shot, like the rest of the collection' depicts Plath uncontrollable, catapulting through her life. Hughes couldn't keep hold of her, "I managed A wisp of your hair, your ring, your watch, your nightgown" she slipped through his fingers and he only managed to catch inanimate souvenirs. This references Black Coat as Hughes states that he left merely footprints that are easily washed away, "My sole-shapes My only sign” implying that he did not affect Plath's life and that he was simply just a being for her to pass by.

Hughes criticizes Plath trying to turn her previous boyfriends into something they were not, "ordinary jocks became gods". These boys are portrayed as "provisional, speculative, mere auras” illuminating the fact that Plath needed something solid to catch and save her. This idea is repeated in the last stanza: "you had gone clean through me", Plath needed something solid that simply wasn't Hughes. This echoes Black Coat where Hughes is referred to as a "blurred see-through" showing that Plath is too focused on her father and that Hughes was just ethereal and didn't have much of an impact on her life.

Throughout Birthday Letters, Hughes reveals his incompatibility with Plath. Essentially The Shot appears to be a self-rationalisation by Hughes, justifying his inability to help Plath overcome her psychological problems due to the fact that he was the wrong person for her. In the poem there's a distinct lack of understanding from Hughes with regards to Plath: "Vague as mist, I did not even know I had been hit”. The simile alludes to the fact that Hughes didn't realise what was happening, encapsulating the point that he wasn't the right man for Plath.

Through the line, "the right witchdoctor Might have caught you in flight with his bare hands", Hughes shows that Plath could have been saved by the right person. This links to The Blue Flannel Suit in which Hughes had supposed It was all OK”, showing that Hughes didnot understand what Plath was truly feeling and failed to see that Plath needed specialist help. Through Hughes' use of the word "witchdoctor", it is evident that this person needed to be extra special and have magic powers, in order to be able to handle Plath. Her previous boyfriends couldn't handle her, “The elect More or less died on impact – They were too mortal" as they were too human and ordinary.

Plath's duality of character is a key concern throughout the collection Birthday Letters. In The Shot, Hughes portrays Plath as having low self-esteem prior to their meeting, "your sob- sodden Kleenex". This However, how Plath felt on the inside contrasted with how she appeared on the outside, “You were gold-jacketed, solid silver, Nickel tipped." She appears tough and unbreakable. Her hard exterior is also mentioned in Fulbright Scholars: "Your exaggerated American Grin for the cameras" shows Plath's duality of character and portrays how she appeared is not the same as how she feels. Black Coat also references Plath's duality, "your two-way heart's diplopic error."

Whereas the poems in Birthday Letters often typically portray Plath as vulnerable and unable to control herself, affected strongly by the death of her father; The Shot appears to be accusatory in tone. In its reflective flashback of Plath's life, Hughes paints himself as an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire, placing the blame for their failed relationship on her intense nature. The juxtaposition of the words "jocks" and "gods" illuminate Plath's irrational and extreme nature. This portrayal of Plath doesn't particularly conform to the rest of the collection, but is similar to The Minotaur in which Plath is described as becoming "Demented" when Hughes is twenty minutes late.

In conclusion, The Shot is typical of the rest of the poems in Hughes' collection Birthday Letters, with regards to structure, form and language. Conforming to the other poems in Birthday Letters, it illuminates Plath's conflicting personality as a force of destruction. Hughes uses this poem, as with the other poems in the collection to reflect on Plath and their life together. This poem deals with the same issues that are prominent throughout the collection; for example the death of Plath's father, Plath's troublesome past and Hughes' incapability to contain and console her.