H is for Hawk quotes

"don't want you going home with the wrong bird"

• foreshadowing, creating tension and suspense

• the colloquial and causal tone makes the wording feel understated ambiguous and contrasts against the serious emotional attachments she later feels

• Macdonald will nearly go home with the wrong bird

"stared down at the boxes"

• verb

• The bird too will "stare" when it comes out of the box, building the reciprocal dynamic

• stare connotes hostility and unease , and intensifys the moment suggests that the bird is powerful, unpredictable and even threatening, unsettling reader and McDonald

"thump"

• repeated onomatopoeia

• Builds suspense and tension for the bird's release, also a violent sound

"as if someone had punched it"

• simile

• anthropomorphises the bird, giving it strength and power

"Like us."

• short, simple sentence

• Builds a sense of irony, Macdonald is clearly frightened of the bird, so it is almost comical that it should be afraid of her

"Another hinge untied. Infinite caution."

• pattern of short, fragmentary sentences

• slows down the pace, as they take a slow methodical approach to releasing the bird

"Infinite caution."

• hyperbole

• demonstrates the extreme lengths they need to go to protect themselves from the perceived threat of the bird

"last few seconds before a battle"

• military metaphor

• suggests that the bird's exit will result in conflict and violence, as though the bird were an army coming to attack

"whirring…clatter…twittering"

• soundscape

• sensory overload as the bird is released

"brilliance and fury"

• juxtaposition of abstract nouns

• suggests the sublime nature of the bird, and her mixture of terror and wonder

• This unsettles the reader because the moment feels both captivating and dangerous

"barred and beating"

• plosive alliteration

• violent soundscape created

"conjuring trick"

• metaphor

• hard to believe the bird is real, almost as if deceiving her

"a fallen angel"

• metaphor

• Biblical in scope and scale, but also with something devilish (Satan is a fallen angel)

"griffon"

• metaphor

• again, the bird is hard to believe: mythological and legendary

"see everything"

• italicisation

• highlights how extraordinary the bird's vision is

"point source glitter… pigment flakes"

• pattern of images

• indicating how precise and sharp the bird's vision is, builds wonder and awe

"astonished"

• adjective

• could equally be true of Macdonald, building reciprocity

"gathered…folding…anchoring…gripping"

• verbs

• which emphasise the handler's skill and confidence with the bird, in contrast to Macdonald

"frail bluish eggshell…scraps of meat…lumpen, fluffy chick…wobbling"

• pattern of images

• which suggest the vulnerability of the bird; Macdonald relates

"I loved this man, and fiercely"

• verb and adverb

• demonstrate the surprising extremity of her response to the bird, and suggest that she admires his competence with a vulnerable thing (like her)

"the colour of sun on white paper"

• metaphor

• a glaring, intense, hard to look at

"It was the wrong bird."

• short, simple sentence

• communicates her shock, as though stopped dead in her tracks

"Oh."

• interjection/exclamation

• disappointment, difficult to articulate her feelings

"like a Victorian melodrama"

• theatrical simile

• overblown, over-dramatic, excessive; not as sincere a connection with this bird

"twittering" vs "wailed"

• juxtaposition

• indicates the pleasant sound of the first bird in comparison to the loud, overbearing, painful sound of the second

"Some madness from a distant country."

• metaphor

• contrasts the relative familiarity she felt with the first bird to the totally alien second bird

"This is my hawk." vs "This isn't my hawk."

• structural shift

• she initially tries to convince herself, but then realises that this bird does not speak to her in the same way that the first did, near-repetition emphasises her changing perspective

"I didn’t recognise her"

• verb

• to recognise can mean to see yourself in another; implicitly she did recognise the first bird, but sees nothing of herself in the second

"Do you think I could…" etc

• sequence of questions

• emphasises her rather pleading attempts to convince the handler to give her the other bird

"white-faced" "wind-wrecked" "exhausted"

• adjectives

• emphasise her vulnerability and build pathos for her

"a seaside production of Medea"

• allusion to Greek tragedy

• emphasises her tragic circumstances; Medea experienced great trauma and pain, and so has she

"something behind it"

• purposefully ambiguous phrasing

• emphasises how she cannot even articulate that this is a response to grief, but clearly her grief is the "something"

"There was a moment of total silence."

• cliffhanger

• structurally, the passage does not tell us how this resolves, leaving the tension high