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Chapter 4: Mr White
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
Feeling broken, albeit for different reasons than White, Macdonald runs toward Scotland to collect her goshawk. Her friend Christina comes along for moral support. The night before meeting the breeder, they stay in a kitschy, run-down hotel, where Macdonald finishes making a set of jesses, the leather straps by which a falconer tethers a tamed bird. One of the reasons Macdonald fell in love with falconry was its obscure, intricately specific vocabulary—the mastery of which used to indicate one’s high social status.
The intricate and specific language of falconry gives Macdonald a sense of power—she knows the magic words and how to use them. It also gives her a sense of belonging. Even as she acknowledges this, she points out that this sense of belonging once had a lot to do with gender- and class-based privilege. Remember that traditionally, falconry is an aristocratic sport. In a way, the language operates like the jesses. Both are a means to hold on to something precious—in this case, a sense of camaraderie.
Themes
As a child, Macdonald practiced sewing jesses and other falconry equipment. She was always keen on tying things to fix things in place; she describes a childhood drawing of a kestrel on a gloved hand where the attachment point between glove and jesses received most of her artistic attention. She this clingy tendency might arise from having been born a twin but losing her brother soon after their birth. She didn’t find out until years later, but when she did it helped to explain she always had that she was missing something important. Working the leather now ties Macdonald to memories of her father, who liked to tease her by using improper terms for her falconry equipment.
Now Macdonald reveals that her father’s death isn’t her first brush with catastrophic loss. Although she cannot remember it consciously, she suggests here that she’s carried the loss of her twin brother in her body for most of her life. She then directly connects this with her childish obsession for the tethers of falconry—the tools that help the falconer to keep a firm hold on a bird that remains wild even after it’s been tamed. Similarly, remembering her father while working on the tethers suggests Macdonald’s ongoing need to cling to something that she’s already lost.
Themes
Macdonald’s goshawk was bred in captivity in Northern Ireland. Goshawk breeding isn’t for the faint of heart; females are as likely to kill males as to mate with them. Instead, breeders must allow the birds to court at a safe distance (through a barred door) before putting the male in the female’s enclosure and hoping for the best. White’s hawk came from the wild, like the pair of British goshawks curious people can watch on the Internet through a webcam. One of these birds is an escapee; she still wears the leather anklets of a trained hawk.
Macdonald’s goshawk has an attenuated connection to the wilderness compared to White’s, although she assures readers that just because a goshawk is bred or kept in captivity doesn’t mean that it isn’t wild. The female goshawk on the webcam offers a stark reminder that, for these animals, the line between wild and tame is very thin, and it’s easy for a tamed bird to revert if given the opportunity. In the context of “holding tight,” the title of this chapter, the female goshawk reinforces the need Macdonald feels to tie up her bird well.
Themes
The next day, Macdonald meets the breeder at the ferry landing. He has brought two birds, Macdonald’s goshawk and someone else’s, so to complete the sale, they must check the numbers on the bird’s ankle tag against the paperwork. Carefully, he opens the box he says contains Macdonald’s hawk. With some difficulty—her hood has come off in transit—he pulls the creature out. She is magnificent and enormous. And scared, overwhelmed by seeing a world much, much larger than her breeding aviary. The breeder gently subdues her, and Macdonald feels a flash of love for him as she slips the hood back over the terrified bird’s eyes.
What impresses Macdonald in the breeder is the way that he controls Mabel not through cruelty or excessive force but through gentleness and care. He exemplifies the relationship she wants to have with her bird, one which ties the animal and the human together with the invisible bonds of love and trust at least as much as with the physical bonds of jesses and creances. Macdonald will also return to this moment in the next chapter, with another interpretation of the moment.
Themes
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It’s the wrong bird. Apologizing, the breeder replaces the goshawk and takes a much larger hawk from the other box. She, too, is hoodless, and has what Macdonald describes as a “blank and crazy” look in her eyes, like the madwoman character in a “Victorian melodrama.” Terrified, she pleads with the breeder for the smaller bird, and he promises to talk to the other buyer.
Macdonald’s instant preference for one bird over the other shows how quickly the lines of affection can bind creatures together. Importantly, too, she prefers the less wild bird, suggesting a subconscious awareness that—despite what she feels at the time—aligning herself with nature isn’t really the answer to her suffering.
Themes
