Hawk Roosting
Hughes was fascinated by the ‘animism’ of ancient cultures, especially American Indians. Animism is the belief that spirits live inside all the parts of nature. Hughes poem seems to conjure the fierce spirit of a kind of Hawk God. In this poem, Hughes writes in the imagined voice of a hawk. The hawk, in other words, is personified. For the sake of simplicity, I will call the hawk ‘he’. The hawk’s tone of voice is proud, arrogant, he thinks of himself as master of his world. Indeed, like a God, he has power over life and death.
His whole life is spent either being in ‘sleep’ or hunting for prey. And even when he is asleep he dreams of mastering his hunting and killing technique. The physical description the hawk gives of itself, ‘Between my hooked head and hooked feet’, confirms this obsession. Its weapons, the hooks, are the things that matter most to the bird. The hawk says that he has no ‘falsifying dream’, nor any ‘sophistry’ within himself, and that ‘no arguments assert’ his rights. Sophistry means false, but clever arguments.
In other words then, unlike humans, the bird is free of rules and regulations, it does not have to justify itself to anything or anyone. Imagery Hughes achieves some of his effects in this poem by changing the scale of things. The small hawk imagines itself to be as big as a God: ‘Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up and revolve it slowly. ‘ It is as if the world is only spinning because the hawk’s claw turns it looking for its next victim. Form The poem is set out in six equal, four line stanzas. Unlike ‘Work and Play’ there is no development or change in form at the end of the poem.
Why not? Because the Hawk will not allow change/does not want change. It is happy with the way things are arranged. The world of the hawk is ordered, neat, efficient, controlled, and the form of the poem matches those qualities. The lines are fairly short and many end with full stops. For instance, the four statements, of apparent facts, in the last stanza all end with full-stops. Do the full-stops suggest ends, finality, death and in this poem certainty? Certainly the factual tone and the end-stopped, full-stopped lines suggest the hawk would not put up with any arguments.
The combined effect is menacing. Summary Subject: Hughes personifies a hawk. He describes it as a survivor and a killer. He compares the hawk’s freedom to act on instinct with the way we are ruled by thoughts, arguments and regulations. ATTITUDE : The hawks’ attitude is arrogant; its tone is menacing, confident, absolute, and boastful. The hawk sees itself as like a king, or a god or an executioner. Hughes’s attitude is more difficult to tell. He leaves the poem open for the reader to decide on how to react to this fierce spirit.
Could we just laugh at the small hawk’s grand deluded view of itself? Style Almost every image refers to the hawk’s control and confidence. Everything revolves around the hawk. Look at the number of times ‘I’, ‘me’ or ‘my’ is used There are lots of short, factual sounding statements in the poem, and a lot of full-stops. These help to convey the bird’s certainty. Hughes appears to be using the hawk in this poem as a symbol for power. A hawk would of course act instinctively and kill for the purposes of survival.
The implications of “Hawk Roosting” are therefore that the poem is an extended metaphor for the behaviour of a tyrant or power-seeking ruler. Such a person would, as the hawk is in this poem, be self-centred and arrogant. An authoritarian despot would not allow himself or his methods to be questioned, and would see the world around him as being designed to suit his purposes. Ted Hughes, in “Hawk Roosting,” paints a picture of a creature that is ruthless and self-involved, showing how a lust for power can take over a being and end in brutality. STRUCTURE
The structure of the poem is regular, with verses of four lines each and similar length lines which creates a feeling of tight control that adds to the theme of power and perfect balance in the hawk. The punctuation is equally tight, with many sentences contained within the line, which gives an abrupt, sharp, controlled feel. However, there is some enjambement which breaks free of the stanza to run across the line break, as if the hawk can disregard the rules, creating a flowing effect as he lists his powers. THEMES – IMAGERY Many nature poems deal with the beauty of nature and God’s power as creator.
This poem subverts these expectations. Here, nature is brutal: it ‘kills’ and ‘eats’. What’s slightly disturbing is that the hawk views these as ‘perfect’ and ‘rehearses them’. This almost gives the feel of a psychopath, yet he is only fulfilling his natural function. The repetition of ‘hooked’ from his head to his feet creates a feel of being captured, evoking his sharp, deadly beak and claws. These are the parts that the hawk emphasizes when he describes himself. The hawk deals in ‘death’. Hughes uses the metaphor of the bird flying direct ‘through the bones of the living’.
The uneasy juxtaposition of bones with living creates an unsettling effect, and makes the bird seem almost supernaturally powerful: as if he exists beyond this one moment in time. The voice of the bird displays god-like arrogance [hubris]. He judges that earth ‘holds itself upwards for my inspection’, as if the world only exists for his benefit. The Hawk frequently uses ‘me’ and ‘my’, which shows a possessive, self-focussed streak. He says he holds ‘Creation in my foot’. This is a literal, visual image of the bird in flight and the earth seeming small below, but also a metaphor of power.
Hughes deliberately subverts [turns upside down] traditional nature poems on the majesty of creation. The hawk lists natural features: ‘sun’, ‘air’ and the ‘tree’, which he thinks exist only in as much as they are of ‘advantage to me’. He also says it took ‘the whole of Creation’ to produce his ‘feather’ and ‘foot’: the juxtaposition of something so huge and old, and biblical against a tiny foot/feather, shows how magnificent the bird thinks he is: as if he is the reason creation exists.
This is interesting because it twists the traditional anthropocentric world view (i.e. humans are the peak of creation, the whole point of it all), that is set down in Genesis. When he flies up he says he will ‘revolve’ the world slowly – as if he is making it turn. He gives the gift (‘allotment’) of death, which is an ironic juxtaposition as no one would want to receive this gift. It is as if he’s the god of death. He says he has ‘permitted no change’ and ends with a final, simple declarative statement ‘I am going to keep things like this’. The use of ‘am’ stresses his power. He doesn’t say ‘will’ or ‘might’; he’s certain.
