Don't be surprised when Ted Hughes starts to talk about nature.
Out of the five poems we have read in class, three of them were about the natural world and its inhabitants. Whether he was using nature as a symbol for writers block (as exemplified in The Thought Fox), to describe the grandeur of jaguars (The Jaguar), or remind man of his place in nature (Pike), nature is a central theme.
In Pike, Hughes uses the first two stanzas to describe the Pike as a formidable predator. Language like "Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin" suggest that the Pike is familiar with its place on the food chain. The line "Of submarine delicacy and horror" just further reinforces this thought.
The next group of stanzas (stanzas 3-7) show the killing quality of the Pike in action. Hughes describes a situation where three pikes, of varying size, were kept in a tank. Though they were all out of their natural habitat ("Three we kept behind glass"), the Pike did not become docile, tame creatures. Hughes says "Suddenly there were two. Finally one." This implies that the cannibalism further examplifies the Pikes murderous nature. Further in this section of stanzas, Hughes says that the Pike had "The same iron in this eye." This shows that the Pike have no sense of remorse or duty, other than to kill.
The final section (stanzas 8-11) puts Hughes in the Pikes' domain. Hughes senses that he is out of his element, where the Pike are the top predators. The line "Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast" shows that Hughes realizes he is not on top of the food chain in this situation. Hughes ends the poem with these two lines: "Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed, That rose slowly towards me, watching." In this sense "Darkness" (with the capital D), it not literal darkness. Instead it is the Pike. So, in sense, the Pike rose to the surface to eye down Hughes to remind him who was the real king of the pond.
