How is the horse depicted in Hughes's "The Rain Horse"?
Certainly, the horse is presented in a rather mysterious and sinister manner in this poetic story. Critics agree that animals are representative of depths of darkness that exist within Hughes himself, and the black horse that charges and strikes out is indicative of some form of the unconsciousness of the young man who plods across the muddy field in anger "for blundering into this mud-trap."
This black figure of a horse that rears up and charges with anarchic energy across the furrows of plowed land may well be, then, a sort of Jungian shadow, born of his sudden impatience with himself that has sent the young man across this field in the bleak and soggy harshness of mud and rain of a northern English countryside.
Coincidentally, there are non-parallels between the actions of the horse and that of the man as the horse runs along the crest and the man...
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runs beneanth it into the woods. Like a horse who stands as though in a stupor in rain, the young man feels suspended from life and time:
The sound of the rain as it rushed and lulled in the wood seemed to seal him in...and gradually he sank into a state of comfort that was all but a trance though the rain beat steadily on his exposed shoulders.
Yet, ironically, the horse stands alert,
watching him intently, standing perfectly still, its soaked neck and flank shining in the hard light....
The scene becomes a nighmarish one as the horse charges the young man and he must hurl stones at it to keep it at bay, just as his emotions neverly overtake him, the struggles in nature are inherent. Exhausted from his imagination and the inherent struggles, the poet feels as though "something were cracking in his head."
Why did Hughes choose a horse as the animal in "The Rain Horse"?
The propensity to link Hughes with the Romantic tradition arises in large part with his association to animals and the role they play in his writing. The choice of a horse in his story is reflective of this. I tend to think that one particular reason why the horse is chosen is that the horse is traditionally an animal thought to be tamed. The concept of "taming a horse" is reflective of human control over animals. Hughes inverts this with his story in which how the horse attacks the protagonist. If one wished to see the horse as a reflection of the man's past, there is a conflict and a confrontation in which the man is unable to "tame" this aspect of his being. The choice of a horse is also reflective of an adversary that challenges the man. If Hughes had chosen an owl or a mouse, the confrontation between man and animal would not have had as much relevance or as much of a challenging element. In selecting the horse, the man confronts his own vision of self, a force that is equally as powerful as the man's current being. It is in this where the horse proves to be unable to be tamed, something that challenges the man into wondering about himself and his own sense of being in the world. It is here where the selection of the horse bears significance and relevance.