H is for Hawk - second hawk

Question 1

‘Everything about this second hawk was different. She came out like a Victorian melodrama: a sort of madwoman in the attack.’ (50-51)

Answer 1

Macdonald uses a literary allusion that likens the bird to a character from ‘Jane Eyre’ who is known for being violently insane.

Question 2

‘instead of twittering, she wailed; great, awful gouts of sound like a thing in pain’ (52-53)

Answer 2

Macdonald’s use of aural imagery presents the hawk as a tormented creature that she does not like immediately.

Question 3

‘as I brought it up to her face I looked into her eyes and saw something blank and crazy in her stare.’ (55-56)

Answer 3

Here, Macdonald draws an implicit comparison between the second hawk’s ‘blank’ and ‘crazy’ eyes and the first hawk’s eyes, which could ‘see everything’

Question 4

‘Some madness from a distant country.’ (56-57)

Answer 4

Macdonald’s metaphor shows that she feels entirely foreign from, and unfamiliar with, the second hawk.

Question 5

‘This isn’t my hawk’ (57)

Answer 5

Macdonald’s tone here is more defiant; she acknowledges that she does not feel a connection with the second hawk and determines to do something about it