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Chapter 23: Memorial
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
Macdonald’s depression deepens. On some level, she knows that Mabel is only supposed to be half of the equation, a bit of the wild meant to be counterbalanced by the falconer’s regular domesticity. But Macdonald has almost entirely cut herself off from other people. Slowly, she realizes that what ties her to Mabel is not—cannot be—love. She goes to the doctor, who prescribes her antidepressants. She can’t imagine how a few tiny pills will help. She worries that they’ll make her alien to herself and to Mabel instead.
Slowly, Macdonald sees that the emotional ties between herself and Mabel go mainly in one direction: from her to Mabel. That’s why most other falconers balance their wild, solitary pursuits with the kind of mutual ties they can make with other human beings. Macdonald has made herself wilder, but it hasn’t helped her because she’s a person and not a bird. As a result, she begins (slowly) to turn back toward people.
Themes
The barrier between the real world and the magical or fairy world seems very thin to Macdonald at this point. She suddenly remembers a poetic, 13th-century English retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice that she read in university. Sir Orfeo’s wife is kidnapped by the fairy king, sending Sir Orfeo mad with grief. But one day, he sees the fairy ladies hunting, and the sight of their hawks striking their prey brings him back to himself. He finds his wife in the group, follows her, and convinces the Fairy King to let her go. Crucially, it’s the sight of the birds that ushers him across the boundary between worlds. Because hawks and falcons have been seen as otherworldly messengers for eons.
The Greek myth of Orpheus (and its 13th-century retelling) presents a moving story of love and loss. After Orpheus’s wife Eurydice suddenly dies, he travels to the underworld to retrieve her. Hades, the god of the underworld agrees on the condition that Orpheus doesn’t look at Eurydice until they’ve reached the living world again. Just as they can see the sunshine of the overworld, an anxious Orpheus steals one small glance backward, thus losing his wife again—this time forever. Although Macdonald doesn’t tell the whole story here, its tragic ending underlies the drama and offers a poignant reminder that it’s not possible to turn back time or bring back the dead, no matter how much the bereaved might wish to. But the medieval retelling allows Macdonald to focus on what it is that brings Sir Orpheo back to life, in a way: the magic alchemy of falconry. She hopes that it will do the same for her.
Themes
Macdonald imagines White getting inspiration for The Sword in the Stone from reading his copy of Mallory’s Mort D’Arthur on an otherwise ordinary autumn evening. The Sword in the Stone tells the story of King Arthur when he was just an ordinary little orphan boy called the Wart. The Wart’s magical teacher, Merlyn, educates him by turning him into various animals. And while this education was much kinder in some ways than White’s traditional one, Macdonald sees that it is still cruel. Each transformation poses grave danger: when the Wart is a merlin (a small falcon), a crazed goshawk named Colonel Cully nearly kills him.
In much the same way that she finds herself inspired by a piece of medieval literature, Macdonald imagines White getting the idea for The Sword in the Stone. Or, perhaps, Macdonald subconsciously modeled herself on White, thus reinforcing the sense of connection between the two that’s crucial to helping her understand her own motives in training Mabel. Although Macdonald sees ways in which White’s own tortured past colors the story, she also sees that the cruelty in Merlyn’s training method comes from the wildness of the natural world. And the Wart’s success suggests that only facing one’s challenges head on can lead to success.
Themes
This scene echoes White’s sexual fantasies, which were “sadistic and directed mostly at teenage boys,” according to Macdonald’s research. White felt that they were influenced by his own early experiences of abuse, and they horrified him. The scene between the Wart and Colonel Cully also echoes the hazing White experienced—and visited upon others—during his boarding school years. Macdonald sees so many ways in which White tried—and failed—to escape his past. Even in training Gos, he couldn’t stop seeing himself as a schoolteacher, whose job it is to prepare their pupils against the day they achieve their own freedom.
Like Macdonald herself, White was shaped by the communities and circumstances in which he grew up. She sees the cruelty in his written work as a reflection of the traumas he himself suffered. This, in turn, suggests how everyone is shaped by circumstances beyond their control, reinforcing the book’s lesson that suffering cannot be escaped but must be faced. But Macdonald finds hope in the way White’s suffering never totally hardened him toward others or himself, and in the way he always believed that freedom is ultimately available to everyone.
Themes
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