Back to the scrap yard, now! (The Iron Man - Ted Hughes)

Name: theediscerning

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Product:	The Iron Man - Ted Hughes
Date:	01/04/03 (515 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Half a tractor

Disadvantages: All the rest - badly written gibberish

Is this piffle still required reading in our primary schools?

If the answer is positive, then we must take the Lord's name in vain. Yes, even you, Jeffrey Archer, could probably create a better "original fable" than this tosh.

The Iron Man is a book that theediscerning read a lot of when young, but finding it in a charity shop the other day for 10p was the only reason he picked it up for a return visit for the first time since way-back-when. As it is the first time he has been able to put such a discerning eye to it since then, it is disturbing to find that it is complete bunkum.

Reading it after such a remove, it is surprising to remember the bit in the first chapter where the Iron Man appears, and falls straight over a cliff, and has to put himself together. Also, the slightly later image of a half-eaten tractor came flooding back impressively. Apart from that it is just nonsense.

Where to begin, then? Well, let us describe the Iron Man for a start. He is tall - oh so tall - "taller than a house". He has a big head - "as big as a bedroom". His eyes are large, correspondingly - "like headlamps".

So when he falls apart at the foot of the cliff, how come a seagull makes off with one of the bleeders?! And then proceeds to match it with the giant's hand?! Ted Hughes loses all consistency with scale here, and in other places too.

Yes we know this is a fantasy, a fable, but do we really want our childrens' fiction to give them complete lies? How many children do we need scarred because they are worried about feeling an earthquake in Japan, because of the nonsense Ted Hughes spouts about them in chapter three?

Even reading from his little chair in his junior school theediscerning knew it was completely risible that an eye and a hand could be sentient and mobile together, the latter using the former's powers of sight. But to find the rest is ju
st garbage is more than a bit of a disappointment.

Anyway, let's recap the classic plot, then. The Iron Man appears and falls off a cliff; bit by bit the bits put themselves back together again. He walks into the sea.

Chapter two is where we meet the human hero, a boy called Hogarth (Hogarth?!?!?! Okay, let's not get started on that one). Shock horror when something is eating all the farm implements - at least inner city readers will be able to learn what a tractor is due to this book. Hogarth and pere have to escape a close encounter with the Brobdingnagian baddy. They drive their car into the metal wall that is his foot - and it topples over and they're fine. Blow us down with feathers, that's handy.

In an attempt to lure the Iron Man to his doom, the natives make a huge pit - "they pushed all the earth off to one side" to stop it looking suspicious(!) - and lure him with a red van. This doesn't work, but Hogarth still gets a successful capture.

Until chapter 3, when it digs its way out. It has to be taught a lesson, so Hogarth gives the Iron Man - and the young reader - it's first lesson - eat your left-overs.

Chapter 4 is where it gets even sillier, with a star moving out of Orion to descend to the solar system, and for a huge dragon the size of Australia to come and demand food. Only this strange creature wants living edibles, not just scrap metal...

It's up to the Iron Man to liaise with humankind and cheat the dragon into a no-win situation, which he does, effectively, but still with far too much repetition from the author. And the world gets given ever-lasting peace as a result.

This is clearly pure hokum, and it's written as such. "Hogarth carefully quietly hardly breathing climbed slowly down the tree." There's enough onomatopoeic tautologous badly punctuated unnecessary comma-less waffle here to fill up a primary school lesso
n, and that's all Ted Hughes seemed to care about. No honest poet laureate could have put his name to this.

It never improves from its silly start. After 90% of the book we finally find the Iron Man has hair, for pitty's sake! The dragon's excuse for invading earth is completely patronising, and as for the end sentiment...

There is a semblance of morality to it all, and yes we should be encouraged to scavenge rubbish tips (with parental supervision) to clear up waste, but all in all this is just codswallop. And with a mature eye it is clear to see where the sources are. A huge, benevolent creature that harms humanity, with humankind at first not knowing where it comes from, and why it is behaving like that? One that walks into the sea after a day's work?

Yes, the Iron Man is Godzilla, and the "space-bat-angel-dragon" is Mothra, or some such.

Apologies for the rant, but this really rankled with theediscerning. Our children deserve better writing, with some semblance of truth to it; how this became to be a major entrant of the childrens' literature canon, even way back when in a more naive age, is a mystery.

If you need even more excuses to slag it off, it spawned an allegedly risible animated movie a few years back, and Pete Townsend made a rock opera of it. 'Nuff said.

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