H is for Hawk: Allusions 3 key examples

Merlyn experiences time in reverse. This means that when he first meets young Arthur ("the Wart"), he has already experienced the rest of Arthur's life and death. Their meeting is tinged with both joy and grief because it is both a beginning (for the Wart) and an ending (for Merlyn). To Merlyn, this little boy inspires Christlike awe because Merlyn knows what a heroic king he is fated to become, even though he is nothing impressive yet.

Macdonald finds that grieving their father takes them out of forward-moving time, just like Merlyn. The moment their father is gone, they begin dwelling on him more than they ever have. They are so consumed by remembering that they struggle to plan for the future or participate in the ongoing business of daily life. They begin dreaming about their father as a child. At this time in his life, the little boy who would become Macdonald's father had no idea of his own significance to the person who would become his child. Macdonald looks at him like Merlyn looks at Arthur, in awe of their "once and future" father. Remembering their father like this seems important, but they can't quite figure out what to do with the memories or how to interact with this version of him. They feel as alone as Merlyn, whose ever-growing collection of memories from the future make him increasingly strange and unintelligible to those he encounters in the past.

Macdonald is reluctant to compare themself too closely to T. H. White, a very troubled man with dubious politics and a tragically misguided approach to raising a goshawk. However, they note ways in which White also resonates with his tragic portrayal of Merlyn in these books. Internalized homophobia and a history of trauma made White feel as though his life was not moving along the same timeline as anyone else's. He struggled to escape the ghosts of his past or imagine the kind of heteronormative future his peers were embracing. With Gos, he sought to explore and control "wild" parts of himself at a safe distance from other living humans. He sought fellowship among ancient, dead falconers, and he tried to find and train his past self the way Merlyn trains Arthur. The great tragedy of White's life, Macdonald comes to see, is the way he drove himself into an isolated (and misanthropic) existence like Merlyn's instead of finding a way to be himself among company.

The allegorical connections among Merlyn, White, and Macdonald are important to Macdonald's eventual realization that, more than a hawk, they need humans. Slowly, they reenter their community and begin to turn both grief and falconry from shields against humanity into experiences they can share with other living people. When they leave Mabel at a friend's aviary for the molting season, they (like Merlyn) know that Mabel will have forgotten them by the time they next meet. Instead of clinging tighter to Mabel or convincing themself that they must grieve alone, Macdonald takes comfort among fellow falconers and friends. Loss may feel lonely, but it turns out to be one of the most universal experiences there is.

The phrase "madwoman in the attack" is a pun on "madwoman in the attic," a phrase coined by feminist literary critics to describe literature's frequent portrayal of inconvenient women as "hysterical" troublemakers who need to be locked away or otherwise disciplined. The specific "madwoman" trope is named after is Bertha Rochester from Charlotte Brontë's Victorian novel Jane Eyre. Bertha is the traumatized and mentally ill first wife of Mr. Rochester, the hero of the book. Embarrassed by her behavior and convinced that it has something to do with her Black heritage, he keeps her locked away in his attic until she sets fire to the entire house. She gets her revenge and dies in the blaze.

The "madwoman in the attic" trope points out the dehumanizing treatment women receive in literature and connects it to the way they are dehumanized in real life. Macdonald compares the second hawk to a "madwoman in the attack." This play on words further emphasizes how inhuman the hawk seems. She is like Bertha at the end of Jane Eyre, driven so far out of her mind that she is ready to burn down her whole world with no regard for the sanctity of life. The hawk is as unsympathetic and unreachable as this caricature of a woman who has lost her mind.

In a way, this second hawk is exactly what Macdonald wanted. They are looking for a creature that is utterly wild that will take them with it into its animal mind. They want to understand what it is like to hunt and fly without human regard for mortality or the pain of loss. When they come face to face with this "madwoman," however, they feel alienated. The bird looks around as though its mind is in a completely different world, one with no access points to Macdonald's. They realize that pure wildness is not, in fact, what they are after. Rather, they want a creature with whom they can connect. Far more than this wilder bird, they are drawn to Mabel for the way she looks around in wonder at her surroundings. This ability to take the world in and respond to it, slowly and deliberately, is what Macdonald is truly looking for.

The "crown of thorns" is a reference to an important symbol in Christianity. When Jesus was crucified, the Roman soldiers were said to twist thorns together into a mock crown that they placed on his head. The crown was meant to humiliate him as a false king. Instead, following the resurrection, the crown of thorns became a Christian emblem of Jesus's true, divine royalty.

Macdonald's head injury, strangely, knocks something loose: after a long struggle to write a eulogy for their father, they return home and write the whole thing in one sitting. The allusion to the crown of thorns emphasizes how unexpectedly monumental and transformative the injury is. The way Macdonald's field of vision grows black and then fills with stars parallels, in a sense, Christ's death and rebirth. Their body becomes a sacrifice on behalf of their bird. The "complicated halo of pain" is a bodily, bloody reminder that they have devoted themself to Mabel as only a human could. It reifies their humanity, strengthening both their sense of self and their awareness of their own mortality. Still alive, they find themself reoriented to the present and better able to command their memories of their father into an intelligible offering to other living people.