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    Hawk Roosting

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    Sourabh Agarwal
    The poem is a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a sparrow hawk. The hawk views itself as superior to all other creatures and believes the world exists solely for its benefit. It sits atop a tree, confident in its rightful place at the top of the food chain, existing only to kill and eat. The hawk sees the entire world and everything in it, including the trees and the earth itself, as existing for its own convenience. It acknowledges no other perspective and believes might makes right, rejecting the need for social etiquette or reasoned debate. The hawk feels completely justified in its solitary and domineering worldview, supported by its position since the beginning of time.

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    Hawk Roosting

    Uploaded by

    Sourabh Agarwal
    119 views1 page
    The poem is a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a sparrow hawk. The hawk views itself as superior to all other creatures and believes the world exists solely for its benefit. It sits atop a tree, confident in its rightful place at the top of the food chain, existing only to kill and eat. The hawk sees the entire world and everything in it, including the trees and the earth itself, as existing for its own convenience. It acknowledges no other perspective and believes might makes right, rejecting the need for social etiquette or reasoned debate. The hawk feels completely justified in its solitary and domineering worldview, supported by its position since the beginning of time.

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    hawk roosting

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    The poem is a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a sparrow hawk. The hawk views itself as superior to all other creatures and believes the world exists solely for its benefit. It sits atop a tree, confident in its rightful place at the top of the food chain, existing only to kill and eat. The hawk sees the entire world and everything in it, including the trees and the earth itself, as existing for its own convenience. It acknowledges no other perspective and believes might makes right, rejecting the need for social etiquette or reasoned debate. The hawk feels completely justified in its solitary and domineering worldview, supported by its position since the beginning of time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
    119 views1 page

    Hawk Roosting

    Uploaded by

    Sourabh Agarwal
    The poem is a dramatic monologue told from the perspective of a sparrow hawk. The hawk views itself as superior to all other creatures and believes the world exists solely for its benefit. It sits atop a tree, confident in its rightful place at the top of the food chain, existing only to kill and eat. The hawk sees the entire world and everything in it, including the trees and the earth itself, as existing for its own convenience. It acknowledges no other perspective and believes might makes right, rejecting the need for social etiquette or reasoned debate. The hawk feels completely justified in its solitary and domineering worldview, supported by its position since the beginning of time.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
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    Ted Hughes - 'Hawk Roosting'

    The poem takes the form of a dramatic monologue in which Hughes speaker
    the spar
    row hawk can be heard expressing his sense of his own superiority. Because he is
    a first-comer, he has a strong sense of entitlement to his own way. Hughes spar
    row hawk enjoys a complete certainty about his place in Creation; he sits in the
    top of the wood , supremely confident (my eyes closed ) that he occupies his rightfu
    l place in the natural order of things. The hawk is an utterly uncomplicated cre
    ature. The hawk exists for no other reasons than to kill[s] and eat ; what is more,
    he is completely at ease with these functions.
    In the second quatrain, Hughes' sparrow hawk explains that he is the lord of all
    he surveys; consequently, the high trees exist purely and simply for his convenien
    ce . So far as the hawk is concerned, every aspect of the natural world has been c
    reated for his convenience; each is of advantage to his twin-ambitions of killing
    and eating. From his lofty perspective, it looks as if the great globe itself ( th
    e earth s face ) is presenting itself for his inspection alone; it seems to the hawk,
    perched at an imperious height, that he is holding the entire earth between his
    talons ( in my foot ).
    He is literally self-centred because he believes that the world revolves around hi
    m: indeed, that it does so at his instigation. As a first-comer, he makes no apo
    logies for his ruthless behaviour, for the earth, from his literal point of view
    , belongs entirely in his possession ( all mine ). It is this primitive way of think
    ing which conditions every statement he makes.

    During his monologue, Hughes hawk makes an extensive use of first-person pronouns
    : he uses I six times and my eleven times, not to mention me twice and mine once. His
    sion of the world takes account only of things (eg. high trees , rough bark , sun s ray )
    hich serve the purpose of his existence. Nowhere does the hawk express this soli
    psistic view more powerfully than in the monosyllabic line I kill where I please
    because it is all mine ; in this line, he expresses his absolute delight in pleasi
    ng himself even where the pleasure involves killing. It is significant that the
    hawk rejects sophistry ; he does not need to argue because he goes about his busine
    ss by force. In his world, might is right. He does not need to bother with any k
    ind of social etiquette; his oxymoron
    My manners are tearing off heads
    is ironic a
    t the expense of his own savagery. His further assertion that no arguments assert
    my right
    repeats that he does not need to engage in negotiation or reasoned deba
    te with anyone: from his stance on the rough bark , where he is roosting , it looks to
    him as if he has a natural right to dominate.
    Reinforcing him in this belief are the geographical and meteorological condition
    s of his existence: The sun is behind me . The first-person narrator speaks as if t
    he sun (upon which the earth itself relies for existence) is both literally and
    morally behind him: that is, supporting his utterly selfish way of living. The r
    oosting hawk
    Nothing has changed since I began
    feels justified in this way of livi
    ng because it has not altered since the Dawn of Time. It is by the natural law o
    f primogeniture that he occupies his position in Creation; he was here first. No
    t surprisingly, he envisages no change : because the status quo suits him perfectly
    , he is going to keep things like this . This final assertion is so self-assured th
    at he sounds as if he is asking the world, What are you going to do about it? Like
    an autocratic ruler, he is certain that he can overcome any challenge to his su
    premacy. He is a domineering individual with an uncompromising attitude to oppos
    ition or resistance.

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