Hawk Roosting Flashcards
Rough plan
Opening - power of hawk
Middle - hubris
End - power
Basc all power cl
Opening quotes
‘I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed’
‘And the earth’s face upward for my inspection’
Middle quotes
‘Now I hold Creation in my foot’
‘There is no sophistry in my body’
End quotes
‘The allotment of death.’
‘I am going to keep things like this’
‘I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed’
- first person perspective demonstrates control of narrative
- appears unthreatened as he is physically above, indicating power and authority
- physical aboveness mimics how the hawk is on top of the food chain
- ‘eyes closed’ conveys an almost blasé attitude as he believes himself to be omnipotent and untouchable by any threat
‘And the earth’s face upward for my inspection’
- believes the natural world is designed just to suit him, demonstrating pure arrogance
- being personified, earth shown to be inferior physically and hierarchically
- hawk looks down on everything believing he is the best, seeing himself as a judge who can punish
‘Now I hold Creation in my foot’
- antanaclasis of ‘creation’ refers to prey that hawk holds in its claws as opposed to process that crafted hawk
- repetition of noun emphasises power and superiority
- believes it is God like
- sense of hubris as he holds in his lowest part of foot
- enjambment conveys freedom and power flowing from one to next
- hyperbolic, blasphemous
‘There is no sophistry in my body’
- advanced vocabulary, articulating itself like a political leader to demonstrate power
- perhaps, drawing parallels between hawk and dictators
- sophistry belongs to human morality and doesn’t apply to laws of nature therefore hawk is not interested in questioning the way it behaves, only what comes naturally
- perhaps this feeling of superiority indicates that he feels above rules like dictators, we disguise cruelty with justifications
‘The allotment of death.’
- describes how hawk allots death to its prey
- juxtaposition as allotment is a piece of land that people work on and grow, which highlights his preoccupation with growing murder
- he believes to be greater than God, as he can cause death
- abrupt end stop implies overpowering need for punctuation
‘I am going to keep things like this.’
- speaks with absolute conviction that there will be no change further through end stops
- beginning and end with personal pronoun indicating no progression as well as egocentric
- perhaps insecure as he repeats himself
- perhaps does not change things as he cannot, veiling his inability through ostensible power
Structure
Dramatic monologue (1st person)
Speaker adresses silent audience, no resistance - power, lack of autonomy
One rhyming couplet
6 quatrains - power over poetry, controlling shape
No meter, rhyme scheme
Lots of end stops - conviction
Context
Ted Hughes - former poet laureate
Fascinated by animals as a child
Spent most of life in rural areas informing on violent aspect of nature
Christian man
Image of bird on a tree - symbol of nazi party
Studies anthropology at uni
Father a ww1 veteran who narrowly avoided being killed and told him stories
Overview
Hughes uses ‘Hawk Roosting’ as a vehicle to highlight the delusional nature of dictators who mistakenly believe that they possess absolute power which stretches beyond the natural world that surrounds them.
Hughes studied anthropology at university, and therefore harboured a keen interest in humans and how they interact with society. He uses this background to pass comment on the complex nature of power in his writing.
