1. ‘Hawk Roosting’ To explore the purpose and importance of structure
To apply knowledge of extended metaphor and its purpose

2. World’s Deadliest

3. I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth’s face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot
Inaction = no action
Falsifying = faking, misrepresenting
Convenience = handy, easy, useful
Buoyancy = resistance, toughness
Inspection = to review, to examine
Bark = bark of a tree

4. Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly – I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads – The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
Revolve = rotate, turn
Sophistry = no logic, dishonesty
Allotment = share, portion, divide
Assert = declare, proclaim, state

5. The following are elements of structure that could be found in poetry:
Structural Features
Features = techniques used consistently in a poem
The following are elements of structure that could be found in poetry:
Punctuation
Repetition
Stanzas
Lines
Enjambment

6. Structural Features Which words repeat in the poem?
What type of punctuation is used? For what purpose?
How many stanzas are there? What is the topic/subject of each stanza?
How many lines are there in every stanza? What are their length?
When is enjambment used? For what purpose?

7. Understanding the Hawk
Who is the narrator of the poem?
Why are high trees ‘convenient’? What is a ‘perfect kill’?
When the hawk revolves in the air, what does it think spins?
What senses are mentioned?
What is the effect of using the word ‘kill’ instead of ‘murder’?
Which elements of nature are mentioned? Why?
How many times is ‘I’ used? What effect does this have?

8. Critical Interpretations
This poem has been interpreted in different ways and one dominant reading of the poem is that the hawk is a symbol of a dictator.
‘The poem of mine usually cited for violence is the one about the Hawk Roosting, this drowsy hawk sitting in a wood and talking to itself. That bird is accused of being a fascist … the symbol of some horrible totalitarian genocidal dictator. Actually what I had in mind was that in this hawk Nature is thinking. Simply Nature. It’s not so simple maybe because Nature is no longer so simple.’

9. In a PEELA paragraph, answer the question:
The Hawk as a Dictator
What imagery or lines could present the Hawk as a dictator of a country?
In a PEELA paragraph, answer the question:
How does Ted Hughes present the hawk as a dictator?

10. Hawk & Nature In what ways is the hawk merely a product of nature?
What other qualities has Hughes ascribed to him? What are his dominant emotions?
How do we see his character?
What other interpretations of the hawk are there? How are these presented by Hughes through the use of language?