Previous
Chapter 21: Fear
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
At Stuart’s invitation, Macdonald brings Mabel to an autumn festival. The bustle of the fair unnerves both woman and bird—they’ve grown unaccustomed to crowds since leaving the city. Eventually, however, Macdonald relaxes enough to enjoy what the fair has to offer, especially in terms of fellowship with other falconers and curious fairgoers. But she’s falling apart in the rest of her life. She has migraines and myalgias. Noises startle her and people alarm her. The pain and fear only disappear when she’s flying Mabel. She’s fascinated by the hunt, how Mabel knows which animal to chase, an intuition American naturalist Barry Lopez calls the “conversation of death.”
The contrast between the happy fairgoers and the isolated Macdonald couldn’t be clearer to readers, but lost in the process of her grief, Macdonald can’t make the connection. The fairgoers are happier because they’re sharing experiences and connections with other humans. In contrast, Macdonald is slowly going feral, becoming more animalistic in her senses and relationship to the world. She’s trying to turn her back on a world of pain and confusion for a place she thinks is simpler. But she can’t fathom its rules.
Themes
Macdonald ruminates on the phrase “the conversation of death,” and on stories about shapeshifting humans who can become animals. In retrospect, she sees how she transformed herself into a goshawk, becoming nervous, “prone to fits of terror and rage,” fleeing human society, and developing her own bloodlust. Feeling so hawk-like, she stops paying enough attention to Mabel. Two days before the memorial service, Mabel bashes into Macdonald’s head as Macdonald tries to flush a pheasant. Momentarily stunned, Macdonald doesn’t realize the extent of her injuries until Mabel starts bating at her face, excited by the sight of blood running from a deep talon slash between Macdonald’s eyes. Clumsily, she wipes the blood away. Somehow, she makes it home. And the blow seems to knock some sense back into her. That night, she writes her father’s eulogy after weeks of avoidance.
When Macdonald thinks about the “conversation of death” in the natural world, she’s avoiding thinking about her own recent encounter with her father’s death. She’s not able to understand this connection until much later, but she lays it out clearly for readers. Desperate to escape her grief, she sees how she tried to turn herself into an animal as incapable of experiencing human grief as Macdonald is incapable of understanding a predator’s mind. Mabel’s attack provides an undeniable reminder that, no matter how hard she tries, Macdonald’s understanding of and participation in the wild can never be absolute. Ultimately, she can neither understand nor become a wild creature like Mabel. She belongs among her own kind—other humans.
Themes
