“Apprehensions” by Ted Hughes: Poem Analysis Essay

According to the definition, apprehension is a certain feeling of fear or anxiety that something unpleasant or harmful is going to happen. In this poem, Hughes describes a hopeless and scary picture he probably sees every day. In “Apprehensions,” the poet’s wife is a part of something over which neither she nor Hughes has control, and this situation is overwhelming. It is evident that her service to fear is becoming like a religion. The poem is focused on the poet’s wife’s fear that attracts and draws her to the writing-table and, at the same time, lives in it. She tries to exorcise it, but the wild fear that it will suffuse everything around, including the husband, children, and furniture, stops her from attempting. She understands that her pen is simultaneously her weapon and the agent of her destruction, and she has no way out and no control over it.