The Importance Of Wild In H Is For Hawk By Helen Macdonald's Goshawk

There are infinite ways one defines the word wild. As the dictionary states “Living in a state of nature; not tamed or domesticated”. In other words, anything without human contact is wild.” However, in H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, Macdonald defines wild as a place where one goes to heal from the real world. Eventually, her definition of wild evolves into something else as she continues her relationship with Mabel. Macdonald’s Goshawk. After her father’s tragic death, all Macdonald could think of were goshawk’s. A Goshawk’s characteristics were what lured Macdonald to them, which made her decide to adopt and train a goshawk to help cope for her father’s death. Although, buying a wild animal to grief someone’s death is not always the best …show more content…
The wilderness is no place for someone to flee and heal from their problems. Macdonald began to realize that the wild was no place for humans and she was nowhere near to ever be like a goshawk, when she saw that Mabel naturally was a killing machine, and every time Mabel would kill something it made Macdonald realize that she was not like a goshawk, but a human being. Instead of actually using the wild and Mabel to run away from her everyday life, Macdonald realized that she did the opposite of that. “I’d fled to become a hawk, but in my misery all I had done was turn the hawk into a mirror of me” (219). What Macdonald meant by this was that she adopted and trained Mabel because she knew that a goshawk would help grief with her father’s death by becoming one and running wild like one. However, she came to conclude that was not happening. What was happening was she brought a wild animal to her home and tried to domesticate it by making it live in a small room and have to deal with her emotions, when in reality a goshawk should not have any limitations, and for Macdonald the wild is no place to go and heal from human …show more content…
However, she began to realize that these birds are not everything the world has to offer. Falconry should not have to be something that makes one want to be isolated from human contact. It should be a sport where one uses a Raptor to hunt for food similar to a gun. The only difference is a gun is stored till the next hunting trip while a Raptor needs attention after the hunt, and that’s where Macdonald got too attached to Mabel, and had forgotten what falconry really was. Since, it showed like she only trained Mabel to cope with her father’s death, but what if her father never died would she have had a way different experience with