Poem Analysis: Ted Hughes' A Childish Prank

A Childish Prank

Man’s and woman’s bodies lay without souls,

Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert

God pondered.

The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep.

Crow laughed.

He bit the Worm, God’s only son,

Into two writhing halves.

He stuffed into man the tail half

With the wounded end hanging out.

He stuffed the head headfirst into woman

And it crept in deeper and up

To peer out through her eyes

Calling its tail-half to join up quickly, quickly

Because O it was painful.

Man awoke being dragged across the grass.

Woman awoke to see him coming,

Neither knew what had happened.

God went on sleeping.

Crow went on laughing.

Ted Hughes’ poem, “A Childish Prank”, is a great story about the origin of man and woman’s genitalia. It’s told in the form of a fable—as the Creator falls asleep out of boredom between the dull couple, Crow gets an idea to take a worm and place it on the man and woman. Using the worm as a way to symbolize fertility, Hughes describes the man’s penis, “…stuffed into man the [worm’s] tail half/ with the wounded end hanging out.” For the woman, Hughes describes how the head was stuffed into the woman, and how it called out for the tail end of the worm (thus symbolizing the need for sex). My favorite part is the last lines, how, “God went on sleeping. / Crow went on laughing.”