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Chapter 15: For Whom the Bell
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 imagines White making a trap with which he hopes to catch some sparrowhawks he recently saw zipping through the forest. He has reasons for this side project, even though they’re not good: training Gos is too easy, and so he hopes to tame a sparrowhawk for a local boy whose hawk escaped. Macdonald found this part of the story incomprehensible when she was young. Now she thinks White was testing Gos’s affection. One day, he leaves the bird alone on a long creance for a minute. Gos, following his instincts to the highest available perch, gets tangled flying up into a nearby oak tree. It takes White an hour and a half to rescue him.
From her perspective as both an outsider and someone who knows the whole story, Macdonald can see how White’s actions show him to be unwilling or unready to test his relationship with Gos in a healthy way. So, he tests it in inappropriate ways. Of course the bird fails: White is asking him for a love that a wild animal cannot give him. Like White, Macdonald is afraid to test her bond with Mabel, and she’s also found ways to avoid it. Unlike White, she has a friend (Stuart) encouraging her, so she cannot go so far astray.
Themes
Macdonald delays free flying Mabel. She puts the bird through unnecessary conditioning exercises instead. Then it begins to rain incessantly. Then Macdonald comes down with a fever. She feels stuck, and scared. One day, in the middle of packing up her house, she crawls into one of the empty boxes like she’s a little child again.
Without testing Mabel in free flight, Macdonald will never feel remotely secure in her bond with the bird, but ironically, she’s too scared to do so. Nor does climbing into boxes help; only in having enough trust and love to face the possibility of loss can one find true freedom.
Themes
