 Hello and welcome to a summary of all you need to know about H is for Hawke by Helen McDonald. Now I'll read and explain this extract in depth and the version that I will be reading is what appears in the Pearson at Excel International GCSE anthology. Now do remember that this is taken from her memoir which is called H is for Hawke which was an award-winning memoir, in other words an autobiography that she wrote reflecting her own experiences. So in this video I'll explain the meaning related to this extract, language devices that you need to be aware of if you're studying this and other contextual factors that you will find helpful as you study this text. So let's get started. So as I mentioned before, this passage is part of her memoir and it was written when McDonald's father died suddenly of a heart attack and she was left devastated. So she's an experienced falconer and thus she adopted a goshawk to distract her from her grief. In this extract she meets her hawk for the first time. So what I'll do is I'll read through sections of the extract and explain important language techniques that you need to be aware of when you are analysing this text. So let's begin. We'll check the ring numbers against the article 10s. He explained pulling a sheaf of yellow paper from the rucksack and unfolding two of the official forms that accompany captive bred rare birds throughout their lives. Don't want you going home with the wrong bird. We noted the numbers. She stared down on the boxes at the parcel tape handles, the doors of thin plywood and hinges of carefully tied string. Then he knelt on the concrete and tied a hinge on the smaller box and squinted into its dark interior. A sudden thump of feathered shoulders and the box shook as if someone had punched it hard from within. She got her hood off, he said and frowned. That light, leather hood, was to keep the hawk from fearful sights like us. Another hinge untied, concentration, infinite caution, daylight irrigating the box, scratching talons, another thump and another thump. The air turned syrupy, slow, flecked with dust, the last few seconds before a battle and with the last blow, bow pulled free. He reached inside and amidst a whirring chaotic clatter of wings and feet and talons and a high-pitched twittering and it's all happening at once. The man pulls an enormous, enormous hawk out of the box and in a strange coincidence of world and deed, a great flood of sunlight drenches us and everything is brilliant in fury. The hawk's wings, barred and beating, the sharp fingers of her dark tipped primaries cutting the air, her feathers raised like the scattered quilts of a fretful porpentine. Two enormous eyes. My heart jumps sideways, she's a congerent trick, a reptile, a fallen angel, a gifron from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through the water. So I'll stop there for a second. Now essentially the opening of this passage really sets the scene for us and it starts in media ray, in other words it starts in the middle of action. Now as the passage begins, she mentions ring numbers in article 10 and she uses jargon related to falconry and essentially her field of work. So this is really really interesting for us especially if we are not really accustomed to this kind of sport. Furthermore she uses the third person pronoun he and the person who looks after these falcons is initially quite anonymous. Furthermore she uses the pre-modifier's captive bred rare birds to really emphasise the uniqueness of these birds and of course to show how she's very very entrenched in knowing about these falcons but also it's educating us in many ways about these different types of birds. Now she mentions that her and this man who of course we can assume sells these falcons, they noted the numbers and this simple sentence is quite straightforward. It really just tells us in a very blunt way what they're doing as they're looking at these different falcons. Then she mentions we stare down at the boxes at the parcel tape handles. The doors of them plywood and hinges have carefully tried the tide string and the syndatin hair signals the careful scrutiny that she's putting into examining these birds. So do remember of course that this was after her father had died of a heart attack. She's really seeing this almost as an escape. This is going to be her new companion in some ways to replace her father. Also she mentions that the man who is looking after these falcons knelt and then entied and squinted and these active verbs really show how they are really scrutinising these hawks really looking around looking at the different packages in some ways that they are really stored in. Furthermore the comparative adjective the smaller box now starts really focusing our attention in on this particular special hawk that captures her attention. Furthermore she uses italics and onomatopoeia to highlight the thump the noise that this hawk makes before we see it. Furthermore the pre-modifier feathered shoulders really gives us a vivid account of how the hawk in some ways also feels like but also how it sounds like as it's hitting the box that it's contained in. She also uses a simile as if someone had punched it to show how forceful this hawk is how powerful it is and just how captivated she is by its movement even before she's seen it. Now he then said that she's got her hood off and this monosyllabic language shows that this man who looks after these hawks is very straight talking very straight shooting as a person and we get more of his personality starting to come through. Furthermore the terms light and leather the alliteration hair really highlights and focuses our attention on this hood to which the hawks are covered in and of course this is to make sure that they're kept away from these fearful looking sights and they don't really get too scared when they're inside the boxes when they're looking at different human beings passing and so on. Also the minor sentence like us shows that she also is very self-aware she knows that in some ways humans can be quite predatory and so of course she's also very self-aware in the sense that she knows that she can be quite an intimidating presence in front of this hawk. Furthermore she uses a series of simple sentences another hinge and tide concentration infinite caution daylight irrigating the box and these simple sentences as well as minor sentences so do remember a minor sentence is a sentence which doesn't have a verb so for example you've got concentration infinite caution they show a rapid pace of change so now it's really starting to build up this anticipation as she comes face to face with the hawk that really changes her life. Also she uses a present continuous verb scratching to show just how impatient this hawk is and she then uses and repeats the term another to show that this hawk is really relentless in moving around this box it's trying to escape it's trying to come out and it's very relentless and in some ways maybe this hawk reflects her own kind of demeanour and her own way of seeing the world which is perhaps relentless. Furthermore there's more italics and onomatopoeia here the thump the power of the hawk has been highlighted also the sibilants syruply and slow start slowing the pace so it's in contrast these simple sentences which at the beginning of this paragraph speed up the pace of the passage now this sibilants slows down the pace. Furthermore the terms before battle chaotic clatter here the alliteration shows the bird's agitation. Furthermore she uses the onomatopoeia twittering to now highlight the sound it's making it's now really really becoming impatient not only is it trying to get and force its way out of the box it's now screaming and shouting and trying to get out and of course it's twittering. Furthermore the repetition of the terms enormous really emphasise the vast size of this hawk and then she mentions sunlight drenching them this is vivid dramatic imagery in many ways it's actual pathetic fallacy because it reflects kind of this aha moment that she has she comes face to face with this enormous hawk and she right there knows that this is the hawk for her. Furthermore the fact that she notes that everything around them is brilliance and fury the juxtaposition of these two terms shows her mixed emotions as she comes face to face with this hawk. Also she uses simile like the scattered quills and this shows just how beautiful but also how fearful this hawk looks like and of course its feathers as well. Furthermore she uses a metaphor she says this hawk is a conjuring trick a reptile a fallen angel and these metaphors emphasise just how hypnotic this hawk looks like she sees it as really beautiful and in addition the minor sentences so a reptile a fallen angel these also speed up the pace and of course it's showing just how excited she is to really encounter this hawk. Also the powerful simile like gold falling through water shows that the hawk is like a blessing she feels really hypnotised but also she feels like she's found her companion. She also says in the rest of this passage that the hawk is a broken marionette of wings legs and light and here she uses cynic doke wings and legs to really focus our attention on different parts of the hawk. So let's carry on. A broken marionette of wings legs and light splashed feathers she's wearing dresses and the man holds them for an awful long moment she's hanging head downward wings open like a turkey in a butcher's shop only her head is turned right way up and she's seeing more than she's ever seen before in her whole short life her world was an aviary no larger than a living room than it was a box but now it's this and she can see everything the point source glitter on the waves the a diving concormant a hundred yards out pigment flakes under wax on the lines of parked cars far hills and the heather on them and miles and miles of sky where the sun spreads on dust and water and illegible things moving in it that are white scraps of golds everything startling and new stamped on her entirely astonished brain through all this the man was perfectly calm he gathered up the hawk in one practice movement folding her wings anchoring her broad feathered back against his chest gripping her scaled yellow legs in one hand let's get that hood back on he said totally there was concern in his face it was born of care this hawk had been hatched in an incubator had broken from a frail bluish eggshell into a humid perspex box and for the first few days of her life this man had fed her with scraps of meat held in a pair of tweezers waiting patiently for the lump and fluffy chick to notice the food and eat her new neck wobbling with the effort of keeping her head in the air all at once i love this man and fiercely i grabbed the hood from the box and turned to the hawk her beak was open her hackles raised her wild eyes were the color of sun on white paper and they stared because the whole world had fallen into them at once one two three so i'll stop there now here essentially she talks in lots of detail about the hawk and she mentions that it was hanging head downward and the litteration here shows that she's really starting to feel concerned for it almost like a mother the way a mother can see a newborn baby for the first time also she uses the pronouns she and she repeats this and in some ways she anthropomorphizes the hawk she gives it in some ways human qualities in many ways we can wonder whether a lot of these emotions that this hawker feeling actually reflect Helen McDonald herself furthermore she mentions about the hawk and having a very short life so she mentions its whole short life and this shows that the narrator is really developing maternal feelings towards the hawk she realizes it's so young and in many ways we get the sense that she really wants to be with it and to nurture it and to raise it also the hyperbole miles and miles of sky really emphasize how this hawk is seeing things that it's never seen before and maybe this can be quite overwhelming for the hawk also when she mentions the sun spreading on dust the personification here really creates a very beautiful and very vivid image of nature that's surrounding them however of course also this shows how incomprehensible all of this sensory language and sensory information is to the hawk that's seeing this for the first time properly also she highlights this when she mentions that the hawk has it's an entirely astonished brain so she says her entirely astonished brain and this shows us of course that the bird it's really flustered and it's not accustomed to being outdoors it's not accustomed to seeing all of this all at once it's almost like an attack on all of its senses and furthermore she uses the adverb perfectly to describe how the man who looks after these hawks he was perfectly calm and of course this is a contrast to how frantic the hawk feels and obviously what this shows is that this man is an expert he's dealt with this many times of course he's read several hawks so he knows how this goes also he describes how the man folds her wings so folding and gripping and these present continuous verbs show that he's very very skillful and adept at handling these hawks furthermore the two simple sentences there was concern in his face it was born of care it's starting to show a turning point so whilst mcdonald herself has realized that this is the hawk for her and she wants to probably take it home actually this man there's a discord he is realizing that there's something wrong and of course we later learn that he realizes this is not the correct hawk that was meant to go home with helen mcdonald also she describes how this man reared this hawk and she imagines how she probably rears lots of other hawks from being very young eggs when they nest in these eggs and of course obviously we get the sense that there's a kind of scientific element to how he looks after and how he rears these however he is still described in a very maternal way almost like a mother and in some ways actually when he when she's describing him as being very patient he's waiting patiently for this hawk to grow in his nurturing it perhaps she sees her father in this man and of course that's why she says she really is very very admiring of how he looked after it furthermore she emphasizes the fragility of these hawks when they first hatch and how much work this man has had to put into ensuring that they grow into healthy young hawks and the alliteration new neck emphasizes their fragility and she then mentions i love this man and fiercely and of course she sees him as a good father figure and of course she probably sees him reflected in her own father so she sees that he's done the same good job with these hawks as her father did with her when he was raising her also she mentions the hawk's wild eyes with the color of sun and white paper and this metaphor emphasizes just how beautiful she sees this hawk as and also she mentions that the whole world had fallen into them and this hyperbole emphasizes the beauty and depth of the hawk's expressions now she continues to go on and to say one two three and this tricolon shows that she's counting there's something that's happening and perhaps there's something that's shifting so let's carry on i tucked the hood over her head there was a brief intimation of a thin angular skull under her feathers of an alien brain fizzing and fusing with terror then i drew the braces closed we checked the ring numbers against the form it was a wrong bird this was the younger one the smaller one this was not my hawk oh so we put her back and opened the other box which was meant to hold the larger older bird and dare god it did everything about this second hawk was different she came out like a victorian melodrama a sort of madwoman in the attack she'll smoke it and dark it and much much bigger and instead of twittering she whirled great awful gouts of sound like a thing in pain and the sound was unbearable this is my hawk i was telling myself and it was all i could do to breathe she too was bareheaded and i grabbed the hood from the boxes before but as i brought it up to her face i looked into her eyes and saw something blank and crazy in her stare sub-madness from a distant country i didn't recognize her this isn't my hawk the hood was on the ring numbers checked the bird back in the box the yellow form folded the money exchanged and all i could think was but this isn't my hawk slow panic i knew what i had to say and it was a monstrous breach of etiquette this is really awkward i began but i really liked the first one do you think there's any chance i could take that one instead i tailed off his eyebrows were raised i started again saying stupider things i'm sure the other falconer would like the larger bird she's more beautiful than the first one isn't she so we'll pause there it's essentially of course at this stage she realizes both her and the man that's selling these falcons they both realize that they're looking at the wrong bird so of course she opens and realizes the other bird that was meant for her is really not in line with what she was been looking for now here in this paragraph when she mentions an alien brain fizzing and fusing with terror the assonance here and the alliteration so of course assonance here is of i and the alliteration fizzing and fusing shows how terrified the hawk that she loved is to now be covered so the hawk has seen the world and then they've now drawn the hood back over her face also she uses a series of simple sentences to show just how stunned and upset she is that the hawk that she witnessed the hawk that has really changed everything for her was not meant for her she says it was the wrong bird this was the younger one the smaller one and these simple sentences emphasize her devastation also the possessive pronoun my shown that she really had grown attached to this hawk she saw it as her own and she saw it as a hawk that should be part of her journey moreover the internal monologue which is internalized which is italicized rather when she says oh this shows again her devastation her unhappiness so after they put her back in the box and they're open for the larger and older bird she mentions that this bird was really really different to what she was expecting her phrase and dare god did it really is both colloquial but also emphatic it shows just her horror at how different this bird is furthermore the simile like a victorian melodrama shows that this bird was too dramatic for her it really wasn't aligned with what she was looking for in contrast to the other hawk furthermore the descriptions she was smokier and darker and also bigger these comparative adjectives show that this bird was far more terrifying to look at and to withhold for her furthermore the onomatopoeia wailed this is in contrast to how she described the other hawk as twittering this hawk sounds like it's far more hostile and far more fearful to really look at and probably more difficult to engage she also emphasizes the terrifying and ugly noises that it makes by describing the awful gouts that this hawk emitted again she really feels like this is a massive mistake this is not meant to be her hawk this is further emphasized when she says this is my hawk this isn't my hawk but this isn't my hawk and of course this is italicized and these parallel phrases which are fairly similar the only difference being initially she mentions this is my hawk and then she rejects this internally this isn't my hawk but this isn't my hawk she shows that she's rejecting this hawk and she's becoming really frantic that she won't be able to take the other hawk which she felt an instant connection with also she describes how this hawk seems quite psychotic and to some degree untainable she says that it had a blank crazy stare and some madness from a distant country again this emphasizes that she feels that this hawk is really not aligned with what she's seeking also there's the oxymoron that she uses slow panic because panic is very frantic and sudden and of course she's feeling the panic growing within her very slowly and this shows both her mixed emotions but also how she really does not feel like this is going to be the correct decision and she doesn't want to live with this hawk furthermore she mentions how of course she's going to breach some etiquette here she's going to breach the standard agreement if you're a falconer you've selected your falcon you should not reject it and of course the man when she asks in many ways if she can have the other hawk his eyebrows will raise and of course the simple sentence shows that he realizes that this is something that you don't really do if you're a falconer you come and take your hawk the hawk that's been designated for you and then you go however of course here she's breaching etiquette she's breaching commonly accepted principles in the falconing world furthermore the sibilance here shows that she's becoming increasingly frantic she's saying very silly and foolish things and she even herself recognizes that she's saying foolish things but of course she really really feels that the other hawk was meant for her let's carry on to the end of the passage i know this is out of order but i could i would it be all right do you think and on and on a desperate crazy barrage of incoherent appeals i'm sure nothing i said persuaded him more than the look on my face as i said it at all white face woman with wind wrecked hair and exhausted eyes was pleading with him on the key side hands held out as if she won a seaside production of medea licking at me he must have stent since that my stuttered request wasn't a simple one that there was something behind it that was very important there was a moment of total silence now in this part of the passage she continues with her frantic request to this man could i would it be all right do you think and these series of questions shows she's becoming increasingly frantic and fearful she really feels that it's going to be a massive mistake if she goes home with this larger hawk also she uses alliteration white face woman with wind wrecked hair so alliteration of w and these are this alliteration as well as the adjectives show she's similar in appearance to the other first and flustered hawk but she's in no way similar to this hawk according to her feeling but equally she also feels like she will be really devastated if she had she doesn't go home with a smaller hawk also she uses assonance here exhausted eyes to show just how to emphasize to us of course how sad she feels to really not go with a correct hawk now this passage ends on a simple sentence which builds up our suspense who wonder if she will be given the opportunity to go to the other hawk she says there was a moment of total silence and this really is a good cliff hanger and it probably forces us maybe this ends in one particular chapter it would probably force us to read on in the next chapter because as i mentioned this is taken from a more a much larger novel about her life so that's all if you found this video useful please make sure you check out our website www.firstreadtutors.com there you will find lots of revision materials to help you in both this part of your English studies but indeed other aspects and other areas of English thank you so much for listening