Chapter 2 - The Biological Fall

Summary

The book begins its soteriological arc with a discussion of the fall as it operates in Hughes’s work: not merely as a playful trope, but as an ontological truth of the human condition. Presenting self-regard as the primary Hughesian symptom of fallenness, this chapter discusses key early poems before arguing that the poem “Wodwo,” with its depiction of a creature crouched in negotiations with a lost divine life, holds a place of greater significance in Hughes’s canon than critical attention has so far granted. Discussion turns to Hughes’s essay “Baboons and Neanderthals: a Rereading of The Inheritors,” in which Hughes attempts to marry scripture to science by suggesting that human fallenness is the result of a mutation in our evolutionary history. The chapter engages heavily with the work of paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Gould (who Hughes himself read) to demonstrate both the strengths and limitations of Hughes’s theorising. Hughes discusses the biological fall in relation to William Golding’s novel, but here we are able to see Hughes’s own deployments of the idea.