Review: The Iron Man

The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Iron Man roared again as the earth began to fall on him. But soon he roared no more. Soon the pit was full of earth. Soon the Iron Man was buried silent, packed down under all the soil, while the farmers piled the earth over him in a mound and in a hill. They went to and fro over the mound on their new tractors, which they’d bought since the Iron Man ate their old ones, and they packed the earth down hard. Then they all went home talking cheerfully. They were sure they had seen the last of the Iron Man. Only Hogarth felt suddenly sorry. He felt guilty. It was he, after all, who had lured the Iron Man into the pit.








Now at last he spoke to the monster. “If you can’t bear to be made red-hot like me, then you are weaker than I am, and I have won, and you are my slave.”The monster began to laugh. “All right,”he roared. “Build the fire, and I’ll lie on it.”He laughed again. He knew the Iron Man couldn’t build a fire the size of Australia. But then his laugh stopped. The Iron Man was pointing upwards, at the sun. “There is the fire for you,”he shouted. “You go and lie there. Go and lie on the sun till you are red-hot.”The monster gazed up at the sun. He felt strangely cold suddenly. But how could he refuse? All right! And he set off. With slow giant wingbeats, he lifted his immense body off the earth, and flew slowly up towards the sun, while the whole earth watched …Slowly he covered the distance, getting smaller and smaller as he went. At last he landed, a ragged black shape sprawled across the sun. Everybody watched. And now they saw the monster begin to glow. Blue at first, then red, then orange. Finally his shape was invisible, the same blazing white as the sun itself. The monster was white-hot on the sun.

View all my reviews