Dramatic Monologue

Hawk Roosting

Ted Hughes

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

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.



The use of conceitin the poem directly corrolates the Hawk to people with power. Instead of just talking about the people, Hughes uses the hawk to characterize what these people do, and the wickedness of their minds.

"Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change."

These two lines show the inability to change when there is someone with so much power. They want to "keep things like this" because it has made them successful, and their selfish ways will keep the whole body at a stand still.

"I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed" describes the kings who refused to listen to their subjects, the people who ruled the land, but were ruled by an ignorant bigot.

Because of this tense feeling and condescending tone, it is easy to see that cacophony was used to create an image of irritation and unwanted force. Hughes uses cacophony perfectly in his poem to indicate what he truly feels about the subject.

If I interpreted this poem correctly, Hughes is using the litote of wanting the power of a hawk to explain the cruelty of the people in power. The hawk is above every other bird, and it is the king of the air, and the metonymy of the hawk is used to portray the high power of the royalty. He never directly mentions these people, but it is clear that he sees them as ignorant. they " kill where [they] please because it is all [theirs]".






These kids are acting out what is happening. It is weird and not very accurate, but it's the best I could find.