Obsession In Langston Hughes Poetry

1. Hughes’ poetry paints the indisputable picture of his belief that Plath’s obsession with her father caused her untimely death in February 1963. In an interview in 1996, Hughes described her death to be both ‘complicated and inevitable’, largely blaming his tumultuous and doomed relationship with Plath on her obsession with her father, Otto. Hughes’ poem ‘The God’ paints Plath as unhealthily and obsessively worshipping her dead father or as Hughes refers to him as ‘a non-existent God’, who died when she was 8 years old. Despite this, Hughes believes that he had a major influence on her. This is supported in her poetry, particularly ‘Daddy’, however she also categorises Hughes along with her father Otto as equally damning and catastrophic

Romantic obsession is also important in analysing the intensity of both Plath and Hughes and Adam and Fiona. Undeniably both relationships emerge from romantic obsession which in turn acts as a catalyst for their whirlwind romances, however with this, heightens the overwhelming intensity with which Plath and Adam communicate, leading to their deaths. Hughes imparts the sense of the inescapability of her doom from the beginning of the collection, for example, in the poem St Boltoph’s, where he describes their encounter as ‘more real, Than in any of the years in its shadow’, which both foreshadows the rest of their life together as downhill from that moment onwards and allows Hughes to steer the reader into thinking that Plath was herself doomed from the offset, and one could tell this just from looking at her. Her all American beauty only acted as a guise to Hughes to distract from the deeply broken woman inside, due to her depression as a result of her difficulty in coming to terms with the death of her father. This idea of instantaneous attraction as being damning for a relationship again is prevalent in McEwan’s representation of Fiona and Adam’s first encounter in Chapter 3, where she meets and instantly becomes infatuated with him, his demeanour and mental maturity are impressive and he plays her the violin and is evidently extremely talented. Adam’s relationship for Fiona quickly flowers into obsession, and eventually he writes to her insisting that she is ‘Satan’ for disconnecting him with his religion in return for saving his life. Both McEwan and Hughes describe the romantic aspect of the relationship in a positive light, but with cracks beginning to show. The tone of Hughes’ poetry is constantly reflective, and he uses his experiences to comment on certain aspects of their relationship that with hindsight, can see the origins of the breakdown in their romance. He writes in detail about their first sexual encounter in ’18 Rugby Street’, where Hughes