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Chapter 13: Alice, Falling
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in H is for Hawk, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Living with the Wild
Fear, Grief, and Loss
Love, Trust, and Freedom
Time and History
Social Divisions
Summary
Analysis
Eventually, Macdonald recruits Christina to help her with the calling-off training, to hold Mabel still while she walks farther and farther away. Every time she does, however, it’s as physically painful as an amputation. Mabel feels like a natural extension of Macdonald’s body, so when she begins overshooting her landings, it feels as wrong as if gravity had stopped working. Macdonald cannot accept the simple and obvious evidence that Mabel is over her flying weight, even when Stuart points it out. She thinks she must have done something horribly, irrevocably wrong. Or that there’s something wrong with her.
Needing to call in help from her friends suggests that Macdonald needs other people more than she’s willing to admit (or able to see) at this moment in her life. Importantly, she—and Mabel—trust Christina enough to include her in the training, suggesting that Macdonald does indeed have the kind of ties she needs to help her out. And Christina’s willingness to face her obvious nervousness around Mabel suggests the kind of true mutuality between herself and Macdonald that can only be found between humans.
Themes
One day, Macdonald, Mabel, and Christina arrive to find their training field occupied by a flock of slow, clumsy moorhens. Mabel is transfixed; her instincts tell her that these birds would be a tasty snack even if she’s never seen them before. Then a pheasant mother and chicks (more prey birds) start onto the field. When the mother catches sight of the hawk, she freaks out. Macdonald clings desperately to a bating Mabel while Christina chases the other birds away. When they finally begin the calling-off work, Mabel overshoots. Macdonald begins to lose her composure, an event exacerbated by the arrival of a college porter who’s curious about what they’re doing.
Even as Macdonald works to tame and train Mabel, reminders surface of her truly wild nature. This episode reminds Macdonald how little it would take to cost her Mabel—especially before she’s fully trained. Mabel begins flying past Macdonald’s fist, essentially ignoring her. This implies that she doesn’t need Macdonald—and need is the only emotional tie a wild animal like Mabel can truly have for a human. Macdonald’s loss of composure hints at how badly she needs Mabel, even though the feeling isn’t mutual.
Themes
Terse entries in Macdonald’s journal chart her growing frustrations. She becomes prone to angry outbursts. One is triggered by watching a woman at a bank peel off a bird decal from a window, crumple it up, and throw it in the trash. The obvious discomfort her anger causes in her companion at the time, a former student she otherwise likes, makes her angrier. She begins crashing her father’s car. She stumbles and trips and breaks things. She only feels comfortable in her body when she’s training Mabel, and Mabel is the only creature who escapes her wrath, even though her heart breaks every time the bird flies away from her.
Although she does her best to ignore it, Macdonald’s grief resurfaces again and again in ways that she cannot ignore. She says she feels peaceful while training Mabel, because of the intense focus it requires, but her anger over her ongoing struggles belies her claim. She’s angry, then, too, at herself. On some level, she seems to register that what she’s doing isn’t helpful. But her need to feel securely connected to Mabel blinds her to the ways she’s undermining her work. She’s doing what she earlier accused White of doing to Gos.
Themes
