H is For Hawk and the Mythological Lens
Helen Macdonald begins her book, H is for Hawk (a memoir published in 2014, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction), in search of a predatory bird. Macdonald’s passion for birds provides a hobby shared by her father until his death; incapable of dealing with her emotions over the loss, she buys a wild goshawk named Mabel. For several months Macdonald maintains and trains the bird consuming all of her time to the point that she loses touch with reality. Macdonald uses knowledge, trial and error along with help of author T.H. White’s parallel experiences in his book The Goshawk to successfully tame and train Mabel. Macdonald projects herself onto Mable by believing she can see things through the bird’s eyes. When Mabel flies for the first time, Macdonald fears that Mabel may not return to her; however, she continues to allow Mabel to hunt and fly. During a visit with relatives, she realizes her need for human companionship, something she cannot have reciprocated from a wild hawk. Macdonald regains her life back and parts with Mabel and keeps her at an aviary in the winter, signaling the end of Macdonald’s grief and brief insanity following her father’s death.
Macdonald’s memoir holds the reader captive because she is able to use a wild bird to show the natural characteristics and stages of loss and grief that people experience. Mabel symbolizes grief, refuge, and freedom; since this book is mostly about Mabel’s symbolism, Macdonald’s journey, and universal themes about nature, the mythological lens provides readers with the best understanding of the book. Although Macdonald writes with beautiful imagery and gives readers a glimpse of her psychological issues, the mythological lens is the only one that allows for the most thought provoking read because it address the most important parts of the book.
The mythological lens is one of the most misunderstood lenses in literature; it is often assumed that the read is about gods, heroes, and fictional settings. However, the mythological lens is more than gods, mythological places and people, it is about universal meanings, symbolism, and a hero's journey, which are all prevalent in H is for Hawk. According to an author for the The Daily Beast, “This becomes one of the big subjects of the book--the way we use nature as a mirror,” (Scholes, n.p.). Macdonald addresses this when she discusses early falconry and how
those nineteenth century falconers were projecting onto their hawks all the male
qualities they thought threatened modern life: wilderness, power, virility,
independence and strength… they could exercise their power by ‘civilising’ a wild
and primitive creature. Masculinity and conquest: two imperial myths for the price
of one. (Macdonald 79)
This is an example of a universal meaning; humans constantly try to project negative or positive qualities onto nature for their own selfish purposes and gain. This is the major universal meaning the book addresses and it is evident throughout the book, especially during Mabel’s training, when Macdonald projects qualities onto her that she hopes to possess herself. These qualities include freedom and independence and by taming Mabel, she can ultimately obtain these characteristics she desperately wants. Mythological lens allows the reader to be able to identify the themes and appreciate Macdonald’s views because they are identifiable.
In addition to universal meaning, another aspect of the mythological lens is symbolism. For example, Mabel’s symbolism goes through three main phases: grief, refuge, and freedom. In an interview with Macdonald, she states, “You can’t tame grief, but you can tame hawks” (Willoughby, n.p.). This shows that Macdonald was using Mabel as a way to overcome her grief. It seems as if Macdonald is taking her grief and wrapping it up in Mabel, hoping that if she manages to train and tame Mabel, she can control her grief and move on from it.
Mabel becomes a type of refuge for Macdonald, because she no longer represents grief, but rather a world without the pain. Macdonald writes, “To me she was bright, vital, secure in her place in the world… The hawk was a fire that burned my hurts away,” (Macdonald, 160). Throughout the middle of the book Macdonald finds refuge in Mabel and when she is around the hawk, she feels almost safe from her grief for the moment. Mabel becomes a door to a new world where grief no longer exists and where everything is full of life.
Mable further symbolizes freedom, as Macdonald begins to put herself back together and realizes that she does not belong in Mabel’s world of heightened senses, hunting and speed. Realizing that this delusion was brought on by her grief, Macdonald states, “the balance is righting, now, and the distance between Mabel and [Macdonald] increasing. [She] see[s], too, that her world and [Macdonald’s] world are not the same, and some part of [her] is amazed that [she] ever thought they were,” (Macdonald, 234). Macdonald no longer uses Mabel as a mirror for her own grief; finally, she sees Mabel as a wild creature and nothing more. Macdonald’s memoir is viewable by the mythological lens approach because it allows readers to understand the symbolism in the story and appreciate the depth and complexity of each symbol.
In addition to Mabel’s symbolism, Macdonald’s inner hero’s journey is a significant part of the book. Macdonald begins her story with her grief, her father’s death was merely an event, true loss had not occurred to her, she writes about having dinner with her friend right after hearing the news about her father, “That was when the old world leaned in, whispered farewells and was gone,” (Macdonald, 13). The full force of her grief strikes her, she goes deeper into a type of insanity and loses touch with reality. The focus of her emotions are tied to Mabel while she reflects within herself, Macdonald writes, “it was hard, now, to distinguish between my heart and the hawk at all,” (Macdonald, 135). As a broken person Macdonald loses her own ability to be whole.
Macdonald finally finishes her painful journey as she is able to have insight to redeeming herself to be whole again. A heroine’s journey provides for the reader to feel and explore in depth what Macdonald goes through and finally achieves beyond her grief – healing. Macdonald describes that after visiting relatives for the holidays and going through her father’s belongings she finds a piece of cardboard with a key to his house attached to it and a short note from her father. “And now, holding the card in [her hands] and feeling its edges, all the grief had turned into something different. It was simply love,” (Macdonald, 268). Macdonald’s major shift from being crippled by her grief to living life normally again shows that her journey is complete and that her grieving process is over. Macdonald’s memoir clearly portrays a heroine’s journey, without the mythological lens the reader could not identify the importance of the story.
It can be argued that the formalist approach is the best way to view Macdonald’s memoir, because the book is full of beautiful imagery and poetic language. For example, while Macdonald is flying Mabel, she stumbles across a field full of baby spiders floating in the air and describes their webs as “quivering silk [running] like light on water all the way to my feet” (Macdonald, 148). Descriptions like this really make the reader slow down and appreciate the beauty found in the fields where she flies Mabel or even in Mabel’s appearance or actions. Even a writer for The Spectator suggests that, “it is in her descriptions of nature that Macdonald really excels,” (Barrow, n.p.). Reading the books just to enjoy Macdonald’s poetic language makes for an enjoyable read, yet this lens still leaves out the appreciation for Mabel’s symbolism or Macdonald’s journey. Readers will be so focused on the words that they will miss what the words are trying to show the readers about Mabel and Macdonald.
An equally qualified final lens is the psychological lens because Macdonald is constantly describing her psychological state. For example, after training Mabel for a while, she begins to “turn [herself] into a hawk… [she] was nervous, highly strung, paranoid, prone to fits of terror and rage; ate greedily or didn’t eat at all.. [she] found [herself] drifting into strange states where [she] wasn’t certain who or what [she] was,” (Macdonald 211-212). Macdonald even delves into T.H. White’s psyche. Macdonald describes White as a fellow naturalist who also turns to nature to escape his bleak reality. His story is such a huge part of the book that the psychological lens would be valuable in understanding his and Macdonald’s struggles; however, if the book is read from this lens the reader misses out on the depth of Mabel’s symbolism, and even the symbolism of White’s own hawk, who represents his struggle to tame his homosexuality. Understanding the hawks’ symbolism is important to understanding Macdonald’s and White’s journey; their symbols signal the changes in Macdonald and White throughout the course of the book, whether it be Macdonald’s freedom from her grief or White realizing there is no freedom from his
desires.
H is for Hawk is a book best read through the mythological approach because this approach allows readers to fully grasp and comprehend how Mabel’s symbolism changes, Macdonald’s struggle through her grief and eventual healing, and the universal themes about nature that are the heart of the story. Even though the formalist and psychological lenses provide an interesting reading experience, they do not allow readers to understand the more prominent elements, nor do they provide the best personal experience for the reader.
Works Cited
Barrow, Andrew. "'H Is for Hawk', by Helen Macdonald - Review." The Spectator (2014).
Proquest. Web. 22 Nov. 2015.
Macdonald, Helen. H Is for Hawk. Random House, 2014. Print.
Scholes, Lucy. "'H Is for Hawk' Is This Year's 'Goldfinch': Helen Macdonald Talks about H
Is for Hawk, Her Extraordinary Memoir about the Death of Her Father, the Training
of a Goshawk, and the Author T.H. White." The Daily Beast (2015). Proquest. Web.
22 Nov. 2015.
Willoughby, Nick. "“You Can’t Tame Grief”: Helen Macdonald on Her Bestselling Memoir
“H Is for Hawk”." Salon 1 Mar. 2015. Web.
