Commentary of Hawk Roosting

Melinee Dufour-Lubek 12D

Hawk Roosting Commentary

By Ted Hughes

Food chains exist in every ecosystem, and each of them create a distinct hierarchy with the apex predator at the top. Written by Ted Hughes, “Hawk Roosting” offers an insight into such a predator, a hawk’s, mind. The bird itself acts as the speaker to narrate, in the present tense, its progression when hunting for pray as well as its accompanied sentiments and thoughts. Quite interestingly, Hughes succeeds in attributing a sense of godlike supremacy of power and control to the hawk that establishes it as the most exceptional animal of the wood. The author creates this impression by characterizing the hawk by its morbid killing obsession in parallel to using stylistic and grammatical devices to compose the sense that the Hawk is the centre of its own universe.

It would be impossible to capture such power and control, and thus the predominant superiority, were it not for the first person, present tense narrative. While establishing the centre focus, the poem’s title; “Hawk Roosting,” does not indicate that each stanza is narrated through the eyes of the bird. Nevertheless, this is a significant stylistic technique, as the reader is invited to explore a new, unfamiliar style of thought as, quite evidently, the bird’s thought process differs from one of a human, or one of a ‘normal’ humans. Hugh conveys this divergence through the speaker’s sharp and unusual language. The bird describes his actions in a way that leaves no room for ambiguity, for instance in the first verse:

 “I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.”

Here establishing the spatial framework with a hyperbole ‘top of the wood’ that connotes a leader like feeling of the bird. Furthermore the present tense, that creates a vivid directness between the speaker and the reader, creates the intended feeling that the Hawk’s claims are unquestionable, similarly to those of God. It is thus a conjunction of the bestial way of expressing itself and the metaphorical and hyperbolic expressions that establish the Hawk as the centre of its animal universe.

By having all elements appear solely as factors that exist for the Hawk as a predator, the author reinforces the subtle comparison with God. This is especially accentuated in the second stanza in which the Hawk describes nature’s aspects as being factors of its hunting game. For the bird, the “high trees” are convenient, the “air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray” are an advantage to its purpose and “the earth’s face upwards” are there for its inspections. It is thus not the hawk that exists on the earth but the earth that exists in the hawk’s universe. This message is again strongly reiterated in the last verse, where the illusion that the bird controls the nature is created:

             “My eye has permitted no change.

             I am going to keep things like this.

In these verse, the punctuation plays a great part; in the last couplet the punctuation marks makes the statements affirmative in a way that no debate is allowed, while the exclamation mark at the end of the fifth verse infers excitement and satisfaction regarding the hawk’s world. Moreover, the change in the length of sentences allows for emphasis to be placed on meaning; the conciseness of the seventh verse “Are of advantage to me,” accentuates this notion that the hawk is the centre of the universe described in the poem.

The previously mentioned theme of hunting for prey, accompanied by that of death, creates a sordidly morbid tone that blends into the powerful image of the hawk created across the stanzas. The idea that the bird kills for the power that this creates for it is verbalized in the fourth stanza; “I kill where I please because it is all mine.”, and this possessiveness also explores the previous paragraph’s idea of this being the hawk’s universe. However, the hawk’s godliness is set in contrast with its thirst for blood, especially through the metaphor where its manners are said to be “tearing of heads”.  This comparison portrays the bird as a veritable embodiment of a predator, one that furthermore takes a lot of pride in its occupation; this is exemplified in the second and third verse of the 5th stanza: