H is for Hawk: Irony 5 key examples

Macdonald compares Mabel's "wildness" to the permeating fragrance of lilies brought into a house. Ever since their father died, Macdonald has felt stifled in their house. In England and other Western countries, lilies are often considered funeral flowers. They have a very strong smell, and while some people find it pleasant, it can also be a sensory reminder of loss. Mabel's wildness is just as potent. It clears the air of the suffocating traces of death and, for the first time in months, gets Macdonald excited about a new beginning. When death happens in the life of a hawk, they do not bring cut flowers inside to mark the loss. The hawk simply keeps being a wild animal. That is what Macdonald wants to do.

It is worth noting that Macdonald never mentions being brought lilies or other flowers after the funeral. Instead of dropping off fragrant reminders of loss and then leaving, their friends come over to sit with them. They stay even when grief makes Macdonald rude or self-centered. This patient support remains constant both before and after Mabel comes into Macdonald's life and, arguably, makes the entire endeavor more inconvenient. Christina travels with Macdonald to acquire Mabel and pushes her comfort zone to help Macdonald handle her. Stuart and Mandy, too, go out of their way to help their friend raise the bird. Looking back, Macdonald understands that Mabel's wildness did not change the house or their circumstances as much as they first imagined. Training her was transformative for them, but it did not turn them into a wild animal or the house into a wilderness. If anything, Mabel strengthened the human community support Macdonald ultimately relied on to get through the year after their father's death.

Macdonald has been crying because they feel utterly incompetent as an austringer. Mabel needs a hood so that she will not become overstimulated in the car. Otherwise, Macdonald will never be able to bring her anywhere to fly, and they will be stuck inside forever. Mabel has predictably fought against the hood. Her resistance has made Macdonald feel like a torturer. As a result, Macdonald has been hesitating to put the hood on, which only makes the task more impossible. Macdonald must hood Mabel, and yet they can't overcome their emotions to do so.

In the scene, Macdonald hides behind a shield of grief to maintain a "desperate fiction of confidence." Macdonald grew up reading about falconry as the traditional masculine sport for British aristocrats. Falconry, they learned, is about emotional control and the battle between men and nature. Macdonald is ashamed of their tears over Mabel because emotion itself is further evidence that they are out of control and failing to "man" their bird. They can't stand the possibility that Mandy will notice the tears as a sign of their "incompetence." Even the most competent and composed people, however, are expected to cry when they have lost a loved one. Macdonald soothes themself by remembering that Mandy will likely attribute the tears to grief.

In retrospect, the version of Macdonald who is narrating the story seems aware of something their past self could not see: they were crying about their father all along. Training Mabel was a desperate attempt to control their grief by inhabiting the role of the cool-headed austringer. Through Mabel, they planned to master their emotions so that they could better cope with the devastating experience of loss. Instead, training Mabel is forcing them to confront how impossible such emotional "mastery" is. Mandy may not know just how much Macdonald is struggling with the hawk, but Macdonald is the one who does not yet realize that these challenging moments with Mabel are teaching them how to cope with the loss of their father. By crying about the hawk but continuing to show up for her, Macdonald is learning how to endure the pain of losing their father while continuing to care for his memory.

Macdonald has spent a few years at Cambridge for work, years during which they have felt part of the school's specialness and history. Now, their appointment is expiring. They are acutely aware of the fact that they would not have received this invitation if not for Mabel. Their role at the luncheon is to speak about falconry and show Mabel off as a curiosity. The hawk has become like the nucleus of an atom, drawing wasps and humans alike into her orbit like electrons. She has an electric pull that no one can resist.

Macdonald, on the other hand, feels like the empty nest the wasps have abandoned in favor of Mabel. Everything that once made them interesting or useful has been frozen to death by grief and by the unfortunate end date on their teaching contract. The sense that they have nothing to offer others turns them into both a hollow paper nest and an "unhoused" creature with nowhere safe to go. Ironically, the very thing that was supposed to help them feel less alone in their grief—their hawk—ends up emphasizing their loneliness all the more.

What Macdonald eventually learns is that they are as responsible as those around them for treating the hawk like a curiosity. When they speak about her in a detached, academic way, they refuse the possibility of connection either with her or with other people who just want to marvel over her. The people at the luncheon are excited to see Mabel. Macdonald tries to turn themself, too, into an exciting font of knowledge about hawks, but they can't compete with Mabel as a spectacle. Later in the book, they realize that the hawk does indeed offer the possibility of connection with other people if and only if Macdonald allows themself to feel their humanity in contrast to the bird's wildness.

Gos has escaped White's custody, but he is far from a free hawk. A hawk that had never lived in captivity would be able to withstand the rain. Because White has been unable to keep his hands out of Gos's feathers, they have been stripped of the natural oil that keeps the rain from soaking in and rendering him flightless. He cannot fly safely down to White, even if he wanted to. It is doubtful that Gos wants to return to White because White is such a controlling austringer. Macdonald imagines White standing below the tree and coming to the horrible realization that his best efforts have in fact trapped Gos in the worst of both worlds, neither safe nor free. Even once Gos dries out, he is still wearing jesses that will catch on branches, making him vulnerable in the wild. By holding Gos too tight, White has destroyed not only his bird's tolerance for captivity, but also quite possibly his bird's ability to survive in the wild.

White's "constant stroking" may seem loving, but Macdonald suggests that it is also rooted in his deep-seated fear from the moment he acquired Gos that the bird would leave him. Gos is not only White's companion, but also a symbol. White is gay, and he is also a sexual sadist; both of these identities are taboo in the world in which he lives. Shame drives White to self-isolate from other humans. White's bond with his bird is not sexual, but participating in Gos's hunting and killing helps White understand his sadism as something more natural than other humans have ever allowed him to believe. Furthermore, if White successfully "mans" Gos (which he takes to mean bringing the bird under his control), he will prove to himself that he is capable of controlling his own animal instincts. In this lonely man's estimation, it will mean that he is fit for human society. His "constant stroking" and clinging to Gos is thus at least as much about his own insecurity as it is about love. Tragically, it leads to precisely the outcome he most fears.

The tragic irony surrounding the end of White and Gos's relationship helps Macdonald consider their own relationships with Mabel, with their father, and with loss. They begin taking admittedly unwise risks when they fly Mabel. On the surface, Macdonald writes, this seems like bad falconry on the order of White. Beneath the surface, however, Macdonald is teaching themself a lesson White could never seem to learn. Every time they almost lose Mabel, they prove to themself that they can love her without clinging to her. In fact, loving Mabel or anyone else might involve allowing them the freedom to leave and, hopefully, come back. This lesson helps Macdonald come to terms with mortality—both their father's and that of everyone else they love. Instead of staving off connection out of the fear of loss, they learn to welcome loss and grief as part of the human experience. 

Mabel has an incredible prey drive, but she does not care about what her prey experiences. She is happy to pick it apart and eat pieces of it while it is still alive and conscious. Macdonald, on the other hand, feels "responsible" for both Mabel and her prey. After a thrilling hunt, their heart expands to hold empathy for both animals at once. They kill Mabel's catch whenever possible to spare the dying animal the torture of feeling itself ripped apart.

Of course, Macdonald's heart does not literally become as large as a cathedral; this hyperbolic comparison allows them to comment on both the moral irony—and moral feat—of mercy killing. A cathedral is a place of Christian worship, where morality is broken down into systematized rules. While "Thou shalt not kill" refers primarily to homicide, it is nonetheless one of the Ten Commandments in Christianity. Macdonald's "cathedral" heart ought to crumble at the idea of killing a creature.

And yet, a cathedral is also a place people go to revere a higher power. By mercifully killing Mabel's catches, Macdonald demonstrates reverence for the dignity of all living things. They break the rules of the cathedral and even interfere with nature (albeit minimally) in order to ease dying creatures' pain. Nothing could be more human than navigating such a complicated moral problem, even if the problem itself is born in the wild. The cathedral hyperbole furthermore helps Macdonald convey a sense of reverence for their humanity. Just as tourists stand in awe of cathedrals as the product of humans' limitless capacity for artistry, engineering, and preservation, Macdonald stands in awe of their human heart's immense capacity for empathy in the face of suffering.