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H is for Hawk
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ARCHIVE - MARCH 2018 - H IS FOR HAWK - DISCUSSION THREAD
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I love what you wrote here - "I don't know very much about White, but I think he was running away most of the time and Helen may be too in the beginning. I think running away and running towards can sometimes be the same thing."
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Very true - I think animals expand our capacity to love and to feel welcomed even on our worst days.
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Week Five - April 2nd, 2018 - April 8th, 2018 - pg 232 - End of Book
25. Magical places 232
26. The flight of time 242
27. The new world 249
28. Winter histories 258
29. Enter spring 269
30. The moving earth 276
Postscript 281
Notes 285
Acknowledgements 299
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We will always respond.
Also, this week we can discuss any element of the book since the reading assignment this week takes us to the end of the book. We can also discuss book as a whole and your final thoughts now.
I hope to hear from all of you who are reading this book with us.
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25. Magical places - 232
Helen is gaining back control of her life. And she is separating herself from being one with Mabel. They continue to hunt.
26. The flight of time - 242
Helen still fears that Mabel might fly away but she always comes back. Winter had curtailed their outings. Helen thinks about rebirth and to be able to take courage from knowledge.
27. The new world - 249
Helen spends Christmas in Maine with her mother and several of her falconer friends who she gets to see. Stuart and Mandy are watching Mabel back in England and she picks her up upon her return and realizes that she has wonderful friends.
28. Winter histories - 258
Helen remembers the lessons about patience that her father used to teach her, and she realizes that all of this time she has been impatient in trying to deal with her grief.
29. Enter spring - 269
Helen decides she doesn’t want anyone to think of Mabel as anything more than a hawk. She doesn’t want to humanize Mabel. That isn’t to say she doesn’t care about Mabel. She is grateful to have her in her life, but she realizes that Mabel can’t live as a human just as she couldn’t live as a hawk. Instead, the two had to find a happy medium, sharing their experiences with one another. Helen knows that having Mabel in her life has helped her mend some of her wounds. This is sort of interesting ending this book at the time of Easter this year - a time of renewal.
30. The moving earth - 276
Mabel will go to the aviary for molting season. She knows that she will miss Mabel but will see her again in a few months time.
Postscript - 281
An update by the author.
Mod
1. . Macdonald realizes after having trained Mabel that “I love Mabel, but what passes between us is not human” (p. 223). What has passed between Macdonald and Mabel? If it’s not human, what is it?
2. When molting season arrives, Macdonald arranges for a spare aviary to accommodate Mabel at a friend’s house some distance away. There’s an earthquake the night before she drops her off. A panicked Macdonald checks on Mabel, thinking Mabel will be as terrified as she is. Instead, she finds Mabel calm and asleep. “I had thought the world was ending, but my hawk had saved me again, and all the terror was gone” (p. 278). Has Mabel truly saved Macdonald in this moment? At this stage in their relationship, how much credit does Macdonald deserve for saving herself?
3.. When Macdonald says goodbye to Mabel, she tells her she’ll miss her. “No answer can come, and there is nothing to explain” (p. 279). Is Macdonald being truthful when she says there is nothing to explain in this moment? How will Macdonald adjust to life without Mabel in her daily care?
4. Macdonald reveals at the end of her acknowledgments page that Mabel succumbed to a sudden, untreatable infection after the main events in her book. Is Helen ready for a life without Mabel? Why or why not?
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T.H. White
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T.H. White
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T.H. White
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J.A. Baker
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Barry Hines
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Peter Matthiessen
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Howard Norman
by Olivia Gentile (no photo)
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Bentley wrote: "Jean I am not sure since I have never worked with Goshawks or birds. Some experience with horses. But I think what I find a bit different is that Helen actually had Mabel in her dwelling ..."Yes, there are differences, but there are more similarities than one might think. I keep my horses in a barn (when not turned out in pasture). That may be their house, but with the amount of time I spend there, it becomes an extension of my house as well.
Domestic horses are not generally afraid of you looking at them, but what about a wild mustang or an abused horse. They watch you "like a hawk" to decide if they must fight or flee. In a confined area, it could be either and a 1,000 animal with teeth and 4 legs is nothing to take lightly. (smile)
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DQ - Week 2, Chapters 7-121. "It was that I had been forgotten. Why does this excite Macdonald?" I think this excites Helen because she wants to escape. If she is invisible (forgotten), then she doesn't have to deal with her father's death or the social niceties that people expect. She can immerse herself further into Mabel's training.
2. "I was turning into a hawk." As Helen learned Mabel's language, Helen became more hawk-like. She had to transform herself into someone who could pick up on hawk cues better than human ones. This was something she admittedly did with ease from the time she was a little girl. I think Helen is someone who never puts forth a partial effort. When she commits to a task, it is wholeheartedly and completely, giving her all. This all in approach however, pulled her away from humanity.
3. "I have lost the ability to disappear." Helen loses confidence in her own ability and second guesses herself frequently. Animals do pick up on human emotions and that can sometimes be the hardest part of training any animal - when you are unsure of yourself. I don't think this was a critical loss in Mabel's training. Mabel seemed to be testing Helen to see what Mabel could get away with. Helen did prevail and I think it was much harder on Helen than on Mabel.
4. "They are things to shun, to fear, to turn from ..." Helen has been shielding herself since her father's death. Bringing Mabel into her home has allowed Helen to retract even further from society, friends, and family. When Helen begins to take Mabel for "walks," she is afraid for both of them. This is part of Mabel's training, but for Helen, it is a sort of reintroduction to the world of people. One in which Helen realizes that the anger she carries toward the people she encounters is entirely misplaced.5. "It is a photo that she can never stop seeing ..." Considering the blurriness and too low angle of the last photo, it may have been taken as her father was falling to the ground. Helen can never stop seeing this image because it is the last photo her father took - a reminder of both his life and his death.
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It is true about animals - most behavioral issues even with dogs have to do with the owners who the dogs sense is not the leader of the pack.
Helen I think was quite introspective and finally saw what others saw. It is interesting the perspective concerning the low angle of the photo and the photo could have been in reality a true reminder of both life and death (in that instant)
DQ – Week 3, Chapters 13-171. Helen and T.H. White. Helen must feel some type of kinship between herself and White or she wouldn’t keep referencing him. I fail to see some of the personal similarities although there are some basic training goals that they both try to reach. White doesn’t have the experience that Helen does and even though he seems to have decent reference material, he makes many training mistakes. Helen is much more patient and kind with Mabel. At this point, I don’t even know if I would read White’s book about training Gos if it landed on my desk for free.
2. Reckonings. Sometimes who we are and who we want to be are not the same thing. As we travel through different phases of our life, we change; we shed one skin and don another. Sometimes we go full circle and end up back where we started and hopefully, where we were meant to be all along. Helen seems to try on a new skin; a skin of feathers, beak, and talons. Yet, in the long run, she knows she will eventually learn to cope, even if it is from within a new human life for her. White doesn’t ever seem to reconcile his life. I don’t think he ever truly found himself. Losing his hawk only seemed to reinforce his insecurities. His problematic childhood added to his burden making him somewhat self-destructive to keep himself isolated and alone.
3. Grief and the hawk had conspired to this strangeness … I think that Helen is reaching out to Mabel instead of reaching out to family and friends to help assuage her grief. She may even be projecting her attachment to her father onto Mabel, not as a replacement for her father, but as a new partner who doesn’t respond in verbal fashion as a human would. Grief is definitely driving most everything she is doing.
4. “How important is human friendship to Macdonald as she travels through her grief?” Helen does reach out when she needs to and it is very important for her to stay connected even in a small way. I think Helen is more on guard around her human contacts than she is with Mabel. Maybe because Mabel does not judge her the same way a human would. Helen is more likely to be open with her feelings when in the presence of the hawk. Mabel and her training does seem to be helping Helen find her way back to the humanity. 5. “What happens if you excel at something and discover you are still unloved?” White seems to have a lot more insecurities than Helen, many of which seem to spring from his inability or lack of skill in dealing with personal relationships. Celebrities are loved because they excel at something. Society leads us into this presumption, but not in what I consider a proper perspective. Do you need to be loved by the masses to be truly loved? What about love of self? I think White was more likely to be incapable of acknowledging love than Helen. There are so many subjective measurements to this question that I find it difficult to answer.
just back from away = adding my comments on this book that I read a few months ago----------------------------------------
This is an interesting book of a woman's grief and her coping with it using a common interest of hawking she shared with her father who died starting a new hawking experience for the author.
It really shows hawk owning and training. It also has, via references to the book by T> H> White (the Sword in the Stone author) links to his emotional instability exposed by his hawk training experiences as told in this and, I think, his book.
The author of H is for Hawk goes through a difficult grieving and seeing her reliance on the hawk is both educational (what the reader learns about hawks) and gripping (her emotional needs that she seemed to have wanted the hawk to fill)
It is maybe better for a psychologist to read to get more from it or see thru it maybe. Anyway it is a likable book showing parts of the world I don't know - (people and animals not places)
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DQ - Week 4, Chapters 18-241. “You feel safe because you are entirely at the world’s mercy”. The safety that Helen may feel is only an illusion like with any other addiction. I’m really not sure how someone can feel safe at the world’s mercy. Maybe I don’t trust the world enough. I believe that Helen does reach emotional safety (as much as anyone truly can) by the end of her story.
2. “How much is Macdonald responsible for Mabel working out who she is?” Helen is responsible because she has taken the hawk to nurture and train, however, Mabel would have worked this out on her own because it is instinctive to her nature to hunt and kill. Mabel is partially responsible for Helen working out who she is because of what Helen learns from the partnership.
3. “Hunting with the hawk took me to the very edge of being a human”. Helen was seeing the kill from Mabel’s perspective. After the kill, Helen returned from the edge because of her compassion for animals and for life itself. With every death, I think she grieves a bit for her father as well as the animal probably without even realizing it.
4. “What truths does Macdonald realize …” A painful truth for Helen is realizing that what she has been doing hasn’t been helping her in the long run at all. Reality is rarely “magical”. What enthralls us as a child usually turns out to be completely different as we grow up and see what life is like. Helen is beginning to understand that withdrawing from her family and friends isn’t what she needs to heal.5. “How much responsibility does Macdonald bear …” Helen bears all the responsibility because it was a conscious choice that she made to “flee to the wild”. Now that Helen has realized what is happening, she starts to see the world around her more clearly. Now she will really begin to heal.
6. “What passes between us is not human.” What passes between humans and animals is a dependence on each other. Humans have the capacity to love their animals, their companions, but is what an animal feels toward us really love? I think it is more likely a dependency. We have domesticated (some more than others) our furred and feathered friends, but I think they accept us because we fill a role for them to achieve their more primal desires. We feed them, we provide shelter, and we provide comfort.
DQ - Week 5, Chapters 25-End1. “I had thought the world was ending, but my hawk had saved me again, and all the terror was gone.” Animals perceive the world differently than we do. They rely on their instincts to survive. I think humans look at the world more in shades of gray rather than in black and white. We have many more complex decisions to make. Just like a calm human can help settle a frightened or nervous animal, a calm animal can do the same for a human. Mabel has saved Helen, but Helen has saved herself through her realizations as she has worked with Mabel and now as she begins to interact more with the outside world.
2. “No answer can come, and there is nothing to explain.” This is where that black and white view of an animal comes into play. There is no explanation needed. What is … is. I think animals live more in the present moment than we do. Helen will adjust fine. She will miss Mabel, but now she will open her heart even more to the humans around her.
3. “Is Helen ready for a life without Mabel?” Helen said she flew Mabel for many more seasons before the hawk died. While Helen must have been terribly saddened to lose her good friend and companion, I think she has learned enough about life and death to deal with this loss without again losing herself.
“What are your final thoughts about the book? This has been an excellent exercise for me to read, comprehend, answer questions, and contemplate. While I have enjoyed this format, I think for me, this is a book to feel rather than analyze. I love books like this that make me reflect on different times in my own life when I may have been in similar circumstances. It allows me to put things in perspective or gain a new understanding. When a book is well written, like this one, it’s extra special.There are a few stand out lines that struck me as truth in this book that I feel obliged to mention. On page 275, Helen says ”Of all the lessons I’ve learned in my months with Mabel this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there … They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. Well said Helen, well said.
Bentley wrote: "Jean I just saw your postings and I will be reading them and posting back to you"I've completed the book and the questions. Thank you so very much Bentley for taking the time to read and comment. It is greatly appreciated.
Mod
Jean, I enjoyed your comments on the book. I think your years of experience working with animals brought a deeper understanding to your reading of the book.Helen Macdonald's beautiful writing was a joy to read.
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Connie wrote: "I think your years of experience ... Helen Macdonald's beautiful writing was..."
I hadn't thought about that Connie, but you may be correct. You are definitely spot on with your comment about Helen's beautiful writing.
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Books mentioned in this topic
Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds (other topics)The Bird Artist (other topics)
The Goshawk (other topics)
The Once and Future King (other topics)
The Sword in the Stone (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Olivia Gentile (other topics)Howard Norman (other topics)
T.H. White (other topics)
J.A. Baker (other topics)
Barry Hines (other topics)
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Jean I am not sure since I have never worked with Goshawks or birds. Some experience with horses. But I think what I find a bit different is that Helen actually had Mabel in her dwelling. Hard to move a horse inside with you (smile). Horses are not afraid of you looking at them for the most part and are not hunters which I think might be hard for me to handle as far as goshawks go. Fascinating book so far and nobody is ever late here. You can go along at your own pace.