Hawk Roosting - Ted Hughes

Question 1

Determination - Hawk Roosting

Answer 1

“or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat”
- single-minded freedom. Hawk is perfectly content with its life - Hughes is praising it and envies it to an extent

Question 2

Beauty of nature - Hawk Roosting

Answer 2

its incomprehensible to Hughes - “it took the whole of Creation/To produce my foot”
So much precision and care was put into a seemingly ruthless animal.

Question 3

Ego - Hawk Roosting

Answer 3

“Now I hold Creation in my foot” - the force of nature is unstoppable. the hawk is the God of his own area “The allotment of Death” - he decides what lives and what dies
“My eye has permitted no change” - links to faith

Question 4

Contentedness - Hawk Roosting

Answer 4

“I am going to keep things like this” - living in the moment, nothing needs to change. Contentedness in hi life and nature. Present continuous suggests continued surveillance. Could be chilling

Question 5

Brutal - Hawk Roosting

Answer 5

Nature is brutal but only because it is natural for it to be so.
“There is no sophistry in my body/My manners are tearing off heads”
It should not be punished, it is just accepted for animals to be this way

Question 6

Life - Hawk Roosting

Answer 6

captures dynamic life through vivid description
“The convenience of the high trees!/The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray”
Works in harmony with other aspects of the natural world despite seeming destructive
Exclamation point for emphasis - pure

Question 7

Context - Hawk Roosting

Answer 7

• Hughes was inspired by animals and wanted to capture animals and their life in their natural state
• Anthropromorphism
• Grew up in Yorkshire countryside, surrounded by nature
• Poet Laureate from 1984 till his death