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H is for Hawk
How does the writer use language and structure to interest and engage the reader?
You should support your answer with close reference to the extract, including brief
quotations
MacDonald conveys a lack of patience in the autobiographical piece of writing to
indicate to the reader how she feels emotionally on edge throughout. ‘The air turned
syrupy, slow’ follows a set of short, impactful sentences which have previously build
suspense and excitement for the reader. The phrase uses sibilance to present to the
reader how time appears to be moving in slow motion. It also slows the pace of the
sentences showing MacDonalds excited state of confusion. This is impactful and
emphasises the importance of the hawk. Furthermore MacDonald uses hyperbole in
the phrase to supplement the significance of the hawk and therefore her father
allowing the reader to sympathise to a greater extent with her.
MacDonald highlights her grief in the extract in several ways. For one the extract is
written in the first-person narrative to fully immerse the reader in MacDonalds
dilemma. MacDonald also conveys her sense of sadness to the reader as she has to
buy a hawk (a large powerful bird) in order to distract herself from her father’s
‘sudden’ death. MacDonald builds up the suspense and tension in the first part of the
extract only to break it down when she realises she has the wrong bird. ‘Oh.’. The one-
word paragraph, again, follows a set of short simple sentences to further allude to her
devastation. The anticlimactic use of ‘Oh.’ shows a sinking realism and provokes
sympathy from the reader. Her shock, surprise and disappointment is all portrayed in
the bluntness of the full stop and the use of italics. The full stop forces the reader to
pause and think that MacDonald is thinking about her father. Alternatively
MacDonald hinted at her grief from the beginning by the use of foreshadowing as the
man told her ‘don’t want you going home with the wrong bird’ so to some readers it
would be less of a surprise however to the majority of readers, MacDonalds
excitement distracts us from it.
MacDonald uses the natural beauty of the hawk to engage the reader as she is at first
excited and overwhelmed, as aided by the structural technique of in medias res to
plunge the reader into the action, perhaps a bit baffled and confused, but draws a
sense of urgency and immediacy to MacDonalds emotions. ‘A fallen angel’ has
religious connotations and shows the importance of the hawk. Perhaps MacDonald is
leaves this ambiguous to represent her chain of thought running riot and to allow the
reader to interpret this in a couple of ways, also allowing them to engage and be
interested. For one, it could represent the angel appearing to Mary and so therefore
denoting importance, power and purity but alternatively there are connotations of
Lucifer the devil as he was a fallen angel from heaven as he questioned God. This
more sinister interpretation corrupts the other short sentences full of gold and water
imagery by suggesting this hawk is dangerous and we should not try to tame it.
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