Hawk Roosting - analysis Flashcards
‘Hawk Roosting’
‘roosting’ implies hawk feels at home + comfortable in his perch
image of hawk suggest power
‘I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed’
‘top’ = top of food chains. speaker is omnipotent. he has a sense of height, power, sleeping in the tree top. confident
‘my eyes close’ = doesn’t need to look at world to know his place in it. he is also still meditating in his success
‘falsifying dream’
reality better than dreaming for him. doesn’t need to lie
‘hooked head and hooked feet’
repetition of ‘hooked’ shows hawk’s physique is designed to be a predator, fierce
he is in control, claws sunk in
‘Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.’
- constantly thinking about death
- rhyming couplet ‘feet….eat’ gives hawk a sense of personality, prideful, smug, conceited
- ‘sleep rehearse’ dreams of killing, perfect
‘convenience’
specifically for him
‘airs buoyancy and the sun’s ray…advantage to me’
- worlds perfect for him. self centred
- all aspects of nature are for his ease
- nature serves + supports the hawk; takes advantage; exploits; uses nature
‘my inspection’
- cold impersonal
- arrogant tone. he is scrutinising earth
‘my feet are locked’
- power, strength, no danger
- power over freedom
‘creation’
- hawk sees himself as God like
- hawk knows how earth was created/evolved. irony as Hawk thinks it has power over earth
‘I hold creation in my foot’
- repetition + capitalism emphasis his arrogance and God delusions. thinks he is supreme.
‘revolve it all slowly -‘
- world turns for him
‘it is all mine’
- selfish nature
- possessive. merciless hawk
- vowel sounds emphasise his confidence
‘no sophistry in my body’
- no false arguments links to arrogance in first stanza, feels he is perfect
- body manners build + designed for death destruction
- ‘sophistry’ means clever but deceiving
‘tearing off heads’
- description becomes bloody, brutal, uncivilised
- violent language
‘the allotment of death’
- ‘play God’ decides who lives or dies
- contradiction/oxymoron
- earth is an allotment for us to grow things to kill
‘bones of living’.’
- end stop = death
- he has power to take life. control
- entitled, purpose. determination of hawk
- hawk descends to kill what earth cultivates
- synedoche. depersonalise the earth, cold, mechanical
‘No arguments assert my right:’
- links to dictatorship. can’t challenge him.
- no justification
‘The sun is behind me.
Nothings has changed’
‘behind’ preposition: hawks places itself above all nature. everything revolves around it. think sun is on his side, confidence in the truth. sun supports him
‘nothing has changed’ circle of life. reign never ends
end stopped lines show factual tone, no change in the food chains
‘permitted’
he is in charge. he decides the rules of nature
‘keep things like this’
arrogant tone to end poem. reinforces his need for power + control
