Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
The pike's jaws are fixed tools for killing, showing how its life is reduced to its function.
In plain terms
The fish is shaped for killing.
What can you take from it?
Design serves purpose in nature.

Where it applies

  • learning about evolution
  • studying anatomy
  • philosophizing life

Putting it to work

  • examine natural adaptations
  • consider animal roles

Questions to consider

  • What defines a living thing?
  • Is purpose natural or assigned?

Another view

It implies animals have no life beyond survival.

More from Ted Hughes

  1. Pike, three inches long, perfect Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold. Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.

    Permalink to quote #3
  2. Stilled legendary depth: It was as deep as England. It held Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old That past nightfall I dared not cast.

    Permalink to quote #5
  3. With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox, It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.

    Permalink to quote #2

Related quotes

  1. If an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among …

    James HuttonJames Hutton quote #1
  2. One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

    Charles DarwinCharles Darwin quote #28
  3. Each generation is a filter, a sieve; good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or …

    Richard DawkinsRichard Dawkins quote #46