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Chapter 29: Enter Spring
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
Early on the morning of February 27, 2008—the day she’s due to take Mabel to her friend’s aviary in Suffolk for the molting season—Macdonald awakes from a nightmare to find her bedroom shaking. She’s just experienced an earthquake, an incredibly rare event in England. She to check on Mabel, who isn’t remotely bothered. And in her bird’s deep calm, Macdonald finds her own sense of peace. In the daylight, she takes Mabel to the large, welcoming aviary where she will spend the spring and summer. She knows that over the next several months, Mabel will forget her. In the fall, they will have to be reacquainted. She knows that Mabel will look different, too, her reddish-brown juvenile feathers traded for the greys and blacks of an adult goshawk. She bids Mabel goodbye and receives no answer—of course—then goes into her friend’s house for a cup of tea.
The earthquake, like Macdonald’s father’s death, is just one of those things that happen without much rhyme or reason. But it takes on a rich symbolic significance for Macdonald because it happens to coincide with another seismic shift in her life: the first time she lets Mabel go for an extended period of time. This bothers Macdonald enormously but doesn’t bother the bird at all. And rather than being upset at the asymmetry this illustrates in their relationship—Mabel fills an emotional need for Macdonald but doesn’t need or love her in the same way—Macdonald draws strength from it. Her bird’s wild nature is no longer something for her to possess and control: now, serves as inspiration for how she can face life’s inevitable struggles with equanimity and composure. And when she feels a little lost after saying goodbye to Mabel, she doesn’t replicate her earlier mistakes of trying to make herself impervious to pain by isolation. Instead, she turns toward her human community once again.
Themes
