H is for Hawk

Question 1

‘“Don’t want you going home with the wrong bird”’

Answer 1

It foreshadows what ends up happening later in the text

Question 2

‘thump’

Answer 2

• It is an onomatopoeia
• It builds tension, making the hawk seem powerful and violent

Question 3

‘the box shook, as if someone had punched it, hard, from within’

Answer 3

It makes the hawk seem violent and powerful and shows the anticipation and fear of Macdonald

Question 4

‘to keep the hawk from fearful sights. Like us’

Answer 4

• It is irony as it juxtaposes the violent thumping
• This shows Macdonald’s compassion for the bird and her understanding of what it is going through

Question 5

‘Another hinge untied. Concentration. Infinite caution. Daylight irrigating the box’

Answer 5

• They are short sentences
• They help to build tension and drama for this terrifying beast

Question 6

‘another thump. And another. Thump’

Answer 6

• It is repetition
• It continues to build tension and anticipation

Question 7

‘The last few seconds before a battle’

Answer 7

• It is a hyperbolic metaphor
• It represents her anticipation and the tension building up

Question 8

‘chaotic clatter of wings and feet and talons and a high pitched twittering and its all happening at once’

Answer 8

• Alliteration in chaotic clatter
• Polysyndetic listing
• Both represent how overwhelming and chaotic the moment of the hawk leaving the box is

Question 9

‘enourmous, enourmous’

Answer 9

• It is repetition, as well as there being italics on the second enourmous
• It adds to the chaos and the feeling of being overwhelmed

Question 10

What does the large standalone second paragraph show?

Answer 10

The utter non-stop chaos

Question 11

‘a great flood of sunlight drenches us and everything is brilliance and fury’

Answer 11

• A metaphor comparing sunlight to water
• These things are very unlike eachother, so to compare them adds to the chaos and the strangeness of the situation

Question 12

‘She is a conjuring trick. A reptile. A fallen angel. A griffon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary’

Answer 12

• Short sentences
• Shows how powerful and otherworldly the bird seems in the moment of chaos

Question 13

‘For one, awful, long moment she is hanging head-downward, wings open, like a turkey in a butcher shop’

Answer 13

• Simile comparing the hawk to a turkey
• It shows her sympathy for the hawk and how vulnerable it is when not flying

Question 14

‘Her aviary was no larger than a living room’

Answer 14

• Short sentence
• Reflects her entrapment and emphasises Macdonalds newfound sympathy for the hawk

Question 15

‘…and she can see everything: the point source glitter on the waves, a diving cormorant a hundred yards out; pigment flakes under was on the lines of parked cars…Everything startled and new-stamped on her entirely astonished brain’

Answer 15

• It is extensive listing, in juxtaposition to the short sentences right before
• The extensiveness of the list shows how open her world is compared to her ‘aviary’ which was ‘no larger than a living room, and how overwhelmed she must be feeling. This again emphasises Macdonald’s sympathy for the hawk

Question 16

‘Through all this the man was perfectly calm. He gathered up the hawk in one practised movement, folding her wings, anchoring her broad feathered back against his chest’

Answer 16

• The verbs are active clauses
• It shows how in control of the situation the man is, juxtaposes the chaos earlier as well as the weakness and vulnerability of the hawk

Question 17

‘All at once I loved this man, and fiercely’

Answer 17

Shows how much she has sympathy for the hawk as she loves him for his care and tenderness for the hawk, such as how he ‘fed her with scraps of meat held in a pair of tweezers’

Question 18

‘Her beak was open, her hackles raised;’

Answer 18

Shows how despite the fact that the hawk seems threatened, Macdonald understands that it is overwhelmed, emphasizing not only how the hawk feels but also how Macdonald feels about the hawk

Question 19

‘There was a brief intimation of a thin, angular skull under her feathers, of an alien brain fizzing and fuzing with terror’

Answer 19

• Fricative alliteration
• ‘Thin angular skull’
• Highlights the birds otherness and how otherwordly it seems to her

Question 20

‘It was the wrong bird’

Answer 20

• Turning point (volta)
• Releases all the tension which has been built up and building on the irony of the foreshadowing in the first paragraph

Question 21

‘Oh.’

Answer 21

• Short paragraph and interjection
• Reflects how disappointed she feels about the hawk not being hers

Question 22

‘She came out like a victorian melodrama: a sort of madwoman in the attack.’

Answer 22

• Simile
• Focus’s in on the birds intense emotions and crazy behaviour, adding to how overwhelmed Macdonalds feels but also the sympathy she feels for the new bird

Question 23

‘She was smokier, and darker, and much much bigger’

Answer 23

• Polysyndetic list
• Shows how overwhelming disappointed she is by the older bird

Question 24

‘Instead of twittering, she wailed’

Answer 24

• Personification
• Shows sympathy to the hawk and she reminds Macdonald of herself

Question 25

‘… and saw something blank and crazy in her stare. Some madness from a distant country’

Answer 25

• Personification as she is trying to relate to the bird by looking into its eyes
• However he words ‘madness’ and ‘distant country’ emphasise the otherness of this bird and show how Macdonald cannot connect with it

Question 26

‘This is my hawk’ and ‘This isn’t my hawk’ and ‘But this isn’t my hawk’

Answer 26

• Repetition
• Shows how she tried to accept that it was her’s but couldn’t which shows how she cannot relate to the hawk in the same way as the first one

Question 27

‘white-faced woman with wind-wrecked hair and exhausted eyes’

Answer 27

• Alliteration
• Shows how tired and distraught she is, as her father had just died and she is just looking for a distraction but cannot get the one she wants

Question 28

‘as if she were in a seaside production of Medea’

Answer 28

• Allusion to a Greek play involving murder
• It juxtaposes the fact that it is a ‘sea-side’ production, which shows the serious nature her emotions but how silly she is making herself out to be