Monday, August 4, 2008
Hawk Roosting
Suggested answers
Identify the speaker in the poem
It is the hawk.
NB- Speaker/persona vs Poet
2a) What is the speaker’s tone in the poem?
• The speaker’s tone is arrogant/proud/ authoritative
b) Identify any two phrases from the first 3 stanzas that demonstrate this tone and explain how they express this tone.
• proud / arrogant/ authoritative
• ‘the earth’s face upward for my inspection’. (1)> even the earth is at his mercy and positioned in such a submissive posture (1)
• ‘It took the whole of Creation to produce my foot’(1)> Such effort and care had to be put into just that insignificant part of his body.(1)
• ‘Now I hold creation in my foot’ (1)> He is superior over everything, even his creator (1)
3) Identify a literary device used in this poem. Why do you think it is effective?
• personification (1)
• it portrays effectively how the hawk views the world from it’s point of view, (1)
• e.g. how the earth seems to be in submission to its authority (1)
• How it thinks it is like a god as it has power over life and death (1)
• How it sees itself as all powerful (Omnipotent) and all-controlling (1)
4) How would you describe the character of the speaker based on the poem? Explain with relevant examples from the poem (7)
• It is merciless/ brutal; its ‘manners are tearing off heads’ and it ‘kills where it pleases’, showing that it does not spare lives or hesitate to kill. When it kills where it pleases for the main reason that ‘it is all mine’, it shows a power-hungry side of the hawk. (2)
• It is domineering; It claims ‘no arguments assert my right’, showing it does not allow any protest from others and once it has decided, no one can change its mind. (2)
• It is authoritative; it seems to enjoy exerting power over others and viewing life from a superior vantage. For instance, even ‘the earth’s face upward for his inspection’. Of course, we know that the earth’s face upward naturally, whether or not the hawk wills it to, showing that it has illusions of grandeur (2)
5) What were your thoughts and feelings while reading this poem? You may focus on the theme, language, tone or any other relevant points in your poem to explain your answer. (7)
• Theme?
e.g. I felt that the poet brought across the theme of ‘Appearance vs Reality’ in the poem really well. As the reader, we would know that the hawk is not the ‘God’ it thinks it is and his view of the world as subject to his mercy is merely an illusion. For instance, the hawk claims ‘My eye has permitted no change’. We know that the hawk is not immortal and things are so ideal for it because it was created naturally to be a predator on top of the food chain, not because it had any say or control in this area to begin with.
• Language?
- I also thought that the poet used words in a clever manner. For instance, the use of the word ‘hooked head’ and ‘hooked feet’ not only conveyed the shape of the bird’s head and feet, it also brought across the idea of sharp, dangerous weapons that the merciless hawk would use in it’s killings.
• Tone?
- I felt rather annoyed by the hawks’ superior tone, as one would naturally feel towards a proud, arrogant person. Hence, I thought that the poet was very effective in communicating the hawk’s character through his choice of words. The hawk constantly boasts and talks about itself, repeating words like ‘I’ or ‘my’ over 20 times in the entire poem. This clearly brings across the idea that the hawk thinks highly of no one but itself and the whole world seems to revolve around it.
• Overall, I enjoyed the poem and I felt Ted Hughes is an observant and imaginative poet who manages to inject character and personality into a bird like the hawk.
9:51 AM
