Theology

Ted Hughes authored “Theology.” Hughes was a prolific 20th-century British poet, writer, translator, and editor. He first published “Theology” as a part of a longer poem, “Dully Gumption’s College Course,” in London Magazine in 1961. Hughes then published the poem by itself in his 1967 collection Wodwo. The poem is a lyric and a narrative: It’s short, expresses the author’s perspective, and tells a story. Like much of Hughes’s work, “Theology” concerns foundational spiritual matters and myths. In the poem, Hughes confronts the creation of humans as it unfolds in the Book of Genesis—the first book in the Bible. The poem sends the message that the story, as most people know it, is wrong. What happened was this: Adam ate the fruit first, then Eve ate Adam, then the serpent (the Devil) ate Eve and got to stay in the paradisiacal Garden of Eden. The narrative reflects Hughes’s unsentimental view of life and relationships. It also links to postmodernism with its deluge of information and playfulness.

“Theology” is not one of Hughes’s most famous works. He’s mostly known for his children’s novel The Iron Man, sometimes called The Iron Giant (Faber and Faber, 1968), his bellicose poetry collection Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow (Faber and Faber, 1970), and Birthday Letters (Faber and Faber, 1998)—a collection of poems that address his controversial marriage to the American confessional poet Sylvia Plath.

Poet Biography

Ted Hughes was born in Yorkshire—a part of England—in 1930. He grew up with an older sister and brother in a working-class family. Hughes enjoyed nature, fishing, and hunting. In 1951, Hughes entered Pembroke College—a part of the University of Cambridge. In 1956, Hughes married the American poet, Sylvia Plath. She typed up Hughes’s poems and helped him publish his first collection, The Hawk in the Rain (1957). The collection won multiple prizes, including the Somerset Maugham Award, and kickstarted his robust career. He published books for children, translations, anthologies, and around a dozen poetry collections, including Wodwo (1967), which features the poem “Theology.” In 1984, he was appointed England’s Poet Laureate and, later, received an Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to the art of literature.

Hughes’s marriage to Path considerably impacted the reception of his work. Throughout her life, Plath had mental health conditions. With her marriage to Hughes in jeopardy, she killed herself in 1963. Before her death, she wrote poetry that blurred the line between art and life. Several people read her poetry as an indictment against Hughes and blamed him for her death. Hughes edited Plath’s posthumous work, like her famous collection of poems Ariel (1965). Feminists thought he symbolized the sexist patriarchy and accused him of withholding and/or destroying writing by Plath that presented him in an unflattering light.

In his comprehensive biography of Hughes, Jonathan Bates details how Hughes’s “exaggerated reputation as a ladies’ man” (p. 86) hasn’t helped his image. (Bates, Jonathan. Ted Hughes: The Unauthorized Life. HarperCollins, 2015.) During his life, Hughes had many affairs. He initially left Plath for Assia Wevill, a successful advertising copywriter. They had a daughter, Shura. In 1969, Wevill killed herself and their four-year-old child. Hughes wrote poems about Wevill and Plath. Publicly, he was mostly silent. In 1998, Hughes published a collection of poems about his relationship with Plath, Birthday Letters, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year. A year earlier, Hughes’s translation, Tales from Ovid, won the prestigious award. Hughes is the only writer to win the honor in back-to-back years.

Hughes died in 1998. He and Plath had two children: Frieda, an artist and writer, and Nicholas, a biologist. Nicholas lived in Alaska, and he and Hughes were especially close. They liked to hunt, fish, and explore nature together. In the spring of 2009, Nicholas hung himself in his home.

Poem Text

Hughes, Ted. “Theology.” 1961. Genius.

Summary

As the title indicates, Ted Hughes’s poem is about God and religious teachings. The main characters—the serpent, Eve, Adam, and God—come from the religious belief that God created Adam, the first human, and then Eve to keep Adam company. God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.

The Devil, disguised as a serpent, tricked Eve to eat from it, which compelled God to banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and send them into the harsher world.

In “Theology,” Hughes’s speaker tells a different story. “No,” announces the speaker (Line 1). The serpent didn’t “[s]educe Eve” to eat “the apple” (Line 2) or fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. That’s not what took place. The speaker declares: “All that’s simply / Corruption of the facts” (Lines 3-4). After the speaker calls out the inaccurate narrative, they tell what really happened in Stanzas 2 and 3.

“Adam ate the apple,” claims the speaker (Line 5), and then “Eve ate Adam” (Line 6), and the “[s]erpent ate Eve” (Line 7). The speaker summarizes the sequence of eating in a phrase: “This is the dark intestine” (Line 8). In other words, the speaker’s version of events is the honest underbelly or unsavory truth.

The serpent gets to stay in the Garden of Eden. He’s happy and “smiling” (Line 11). One reason why he’s in good spirits is because of “God’s querulous calling” (Line 12). The speaker doesn’t explain why God is upset, but it might have to do with the serpent’s consumption of Adam and Eve and his subversion of God’s creatures.