'There is no sophistry in my body' – this statement expresses the brutal frankness of the Hawk. Does the poet suggest something through this statement?
'There is no sophistry in my body' – this statement expresses the brutal frankness of the Hawk. Does the poet suggest something through this statement?
Ted Hughes in the poem Hawk Roosting portrays the Hawk as arrogant and fallaciously authoritative. The poet apprises Hawk's savage and grotesque image to the reader. The fashion in which it is personified, belittling God and Creation is condemned as fascism by many critics. The direct way it beholds itself as the highest authority shows its audacity to challenge all the social and moral laws of this world. When it says that “there is no sophistry in my body”, the Hawk is ruthless and brutally frank about its physiology. It is disdainful and its narcissism is much apparent by its insolence and impudence as it does not pay heed to the laws of nature or even the social laws. It lacks mannerism and is gall; only knows killing and ripping the heads off as and when it pleases the Hawk, as it all (the whole Creation) is subservient to him and it. In the fifth stanza, the Hawk declares itself inscrutable and that its ways of killing are not to be questioned. It is the Hawk who decides the allotment of death and there is no other supreme authority to challenge its flight, which is “through the bones of the living”.
Ted Hughes in the poem Hawk Roosting portrays the Hawk as arrogant and fallaciously authoritative. The poet apprises Hawk's savage and grotesque image to the reader. The fashion in which it is personified, belittling God and Creation is condemned as fascism by many critics. The direct way it beholds itself as the highest authority shows its audacity to challenge all the social and moral laws of this world. When it says that “there is no sophistry in my body”, the Hawk is ruthless and brutally frank about its physiology. It is disdainful and its narcissism is much apparent by its insolence and impudence as it does not pay heed to the laws of nature or even the social laws. It lacks mannerism and is gall; only knows killing and ripping the heads off as and when it pleases the Hawk, as it all (the whole Creation) is subservient to him and it. In the fifth stanza, the Hawk declares itself inscrutable and that its ways of killing are not to be questioned. It is the Hawk who decides the allotment of death and there is no other supreme authority to challenge its flight, which is “through the bones of the living”.
