PHI 38: "Selfishness or Cooperation: Properties of Units of Natural Selection in Dawkins' The Selfish Gene"

Jolene Brown

Prof. V. Keyser

Philosophy 38

17 July 2009

Selfishness or Cooperation:

Properties of Units of Natural Selection in Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene

In the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins there is a case built for the importance of the genetic unit as the sole operator of natural selection. He claims that a unit of natural selection has three properties, and that the largest unit that exhibits all three of those properties is the definitive unit of natural selection. However, he does not account for all the things that would be required of a unit of natural selection, and his argument itself is based on a large assumption that one must accept before his argument can be seen as a good explanation for the gene being the unit of natural selection. In this way, his argument can be considered weakened since it is missing at least one fundamental element that would assist in natural selection, and that the argument that he makes cannot work without that fundamental assumption.

Dawkins argument consists of three premises and a conclusion which he draws from those premises. His first premise is that the properties of a unit of natural selection can be identified as longevity, fecundity and copying fidelity. He identifies these properties because, he claims, they support the stability of the unit:

Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ is really a special case of a more general law of survival of the stable. The universe is populated by stable things. A stable thing is a collection of atoms that is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name. (Dawkins 12)

With this first premise Dawkins is identifying those things he feels contribute to the stability of those units of natural selection, and in turn, to the stability of the organisms. With this argument the emphasis is placed on the stability of the organism—the “survival machine”—that houses, protects and assists in the recreation of the natural selection unit.

There is, however, an assumption made in this first premise not addressed by Dawkins in his argument: that these properties (longevity, fecundity, copying fidelity) can be measured in such a way to determine whether or not they are quantitatively significant. For example, it may be argued that science cannot empirically study, or quantitatively measure the longevity of a single gene within a gene pool, or for that matter, measure the longevity of several hundred genes in order to create a wide enough sample to claim that genes that stay in the gene pool longer have more influence on natural selection than others. “It is [the gene’s] potential immorality that makes a gene a good candidate as the basic unit of natural selection” (36) and no amount of science can accurately measure or account for an “immortal” longevity: the longevity factor is rendered unfalsifiable with that assumption of quantification in place. The longevity property may be an important property to a unit of natural selection, but the inclusion of this property undermines the argument itself by making it impossible to be measured by any form of accurate science.

The second premise is that natural selection operates on the largest single entity that embodies these three properties. The importance of the largest entity, in contrast to the smallest, is that natural selection chooses traits that are deemed better for “stability” or survival. Natural selection cannot select a directly from the gene pool because the genes are so small and so ineffectual in the environment that instead natural selection looks at the effects of the gene on the machine that it builds. “If selection tried to choose DNA molecules directly it would hardly find any criterion by which to do so…The important differences between genes emerge only their effects” (235). Based on this argument, it seems likely that natural selection would need to have, at the very minimum, a unit that would have enough effect on the survival machine to allow selection in the first place. The property of longevity also rules out most other organisms beyond the gene, since the gene does last longer than all the organisms that it is a part of. It would seem this premise is a solid second premise in the argument. The third premise is the claim that it is the gene, and no other organism or entity that embodies all of these properties and is the largest one that can be acted on by natural selection. This claim, too, is a fairly straight forward claim, and does not seem to have any underlying assumptions, much like the second premise. Based on these three premises, the conclusion drawn is that the gene is the largest unit on which natural selection is acting, and that the phenotype of the genes are what is being selected for by natural selection.

The problem one is left with after analysis of Dawkins’ argument is not any invalidity of his argument, despite the assumption one must allow in the first premise. The problem lies in that there seems to be one major trait of the natural selection unit that he either did not take into account, or that he discounted altogether as a factor: cooperation. Cooperation, in this sense, does not refer only to the behavioral adaption of two entities working together (altruistically or not), but instead physical cooperation between two of the units to devise more and more extravagant and complicated survival machines.

…evolution is constructive because of cooperation…Cooperation allows specialization and thereby promotes biological diversity. […] Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of evolution is its ability to generate cooperation in a competitive world. (Nowak 1563)

Cooperation as a behavior begins at the physical level, similar to the selfishness that Dawkins argues for throughout his book. However, cooperation, it can be argued, is fundamental to the successful reproduction of genetic information. Without the fundamental cooperation between to replicators in the original “replicator soup” there would not be the “survival machines” to house the selfish units of natural selection. Though the genes may still be selfish, the individual unit does not have enough power on its own to become and maintain itself as a unit of natural selection: the Dawkins quote on page 235 (stated above) is clear in this claim. This property of cooperation can then be posited as another, if not the underlying, property that allows natural selection to operate in the first place. Through the combination of genes to form their survival machines, they not only allow natural selection to operate on their effects, but they also are able to reproduce themselves with other genes to form new and elaborate survival machines.

Dawkins may be right in that the largest single unit of natural selection is the gene. The evidence he presents in this way is fairly convincing, and other scientists tend to agree. What is up for debate is the idea that the genes are intrinsically selfish. Without other genes, the genes themselves cannot operate effectively as a unit of natural selection or as effective reproducers of their own genetic material for longevity because “…individual genes cannot be considered as replicators because they do not behave as separate units during reproduction” (Lloyd, Sect. 2.2). The genes may have started out as a form of replicator but natural selection immediately began favoring those replicators that could cooperate with other replicators to form large, more complex and protective survival machines. This leap from the selfish replicator to the cooperative gene seems to be one that Dawkins is either unwilling to make or has decided not to make because it would undermine some of his other ideas. Whatever his reason, it is important to realize that without cooperation, the at least one of the properties that he posits as important to the individual unit of natural selection, fecundity, does not operate without the important quality of the unit to cooperate effectively with other units.

Works Cited

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene: 30^th Anniversary Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Lloyd, Elisabeth. "Units and Levels of Selection." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition). Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Nowak, Martin A., et al. “Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation.” Science magazine. Vol. 314 (December 2006). Pages 1560-1563. URL = http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/314/5805/1560.

ENL 111: "The Power of Women in Malory's Arthurian Works"

Jolene P. Brown

Dr. K. Smith

ENL 111

8 June 2009

The Power of Women in Malory’s Arthurian Works

The women of King Arthur’s world have two important attributes in the work of Malory. It is the women in the stories who establish gender roles between a knight and a lady or create ambiguous gender roles, raising questions about the significance of masculinity and femininity. As well as creating gender distinctions, a lady is often the key factor in determining the destiny of the knights and a knight’s relationship to a woman can be a determining factor is his success or failure in the sphere of the court. It is in this way that women have control over the masculine realm around them, and though their role is limited and very subtle, it is important to the overall continuum of Arthur’s court and his knights. The combination of establishing the gender role and determining the success or failure of a knight makes the women of Arthur’s world powerful creatures, which may explain the prevalence of mystical and magical qualities associated with the female realm, since the power that women wield is, at times, so subtle it is hardly recognized as power at all.

In Malory’s text, the women of King Arthur’s court do not often have a voice unto themselves. Instead of speaking, women use objects and attributes to communicate to each other and to knights in ways that are not altogether obvious. In her essay “Female Heroes, Heroines, and Counter-Heroes,” Maureen Fries argues that Arthurian women play one, and rarely more, of her three defined roles in connection to their femininity: a female hero, a heroine, or a counter-hero. However, she goes on to say:

All of these women, even the comparatively powerful counter-heroes, are limited by their inability to assume such traditional male roles as the warrior one of physical combat…female heroes and counter-heroes must use guile, both verbal and magical…As for heroines, they have only their beauty, a chancy weapon at best. (72)

Though it is true that women are limited to a certain numbers of tools at their disposal for moving up the social ladder they make effective use of what they have to further their cause. By making use of beauty, magical charms, spells, and companionship with other women, the ladies of the court are able to etch out an existence that, more often than not, works to their favor.

The goal of most Arthurian women is marriage and many of the women identify their future partners quickly by judging a knight according to his outward appearance, chivalrous character and family affiliations. Winning those partners, however, tends to be a harder feat than just the identification as there are often competitions among ladies for the best of the knights. The most obvious example of this is found in the overwhelming attraction to Lancelot and the lengths to which women go to seduce him for their own. Lancelot is pursued by four queens, who demand he choose one of them as his paramour (Malory p. 152); he is tricked into siring Galahad by Eleyne who drugs him (480); he is nursed back to health then given an ultimatum by another Elaine, who commits suicide at his refusal to be her husband or allow her to be his paramour (638). Each of these women uses their best skills in an attempt to woo or otherwise gain the favor of sir Lancelot. Despite their overall failures, their attempts should not be discounted as ineffective or frivolous. The power that each wields is strong, failing only because their choice of knight to enact it upon is Lancelot, the greatest knight of all. It can be argued that their failure in this capacity speaks more to the power of Lancelot than it does to lack of talent or power on the part of these very motivated queens and maidens.

Arthurian women play a vital role in the unfolding of Malory’s story despite their lack of voice and overall dismissal to the edges of the plot. There are several instances where women dictate not only the direction of the story, but also foresee and, indeed, enforce the outcome of the story. Through their use of their beauty, magic, magical items, feminine charms or even emotional appeals and ultimatums, women are able to manipulate the men around them to perform tasks that range from the menial to heroic. Even weapons, which are almost exclusively items that are identified with masculinity, are almost always associated with a woman through ownership or access, as discussed by Geraldine Heng:

Perhaps the most enigmatic and dangerous items of this material trove are swords, the instruments on which all masculine accomplishment must turn, and therefore pivotal to conceptions of male identity and personal force. These are so strongly associated with the feminine sources and ownership as sometimes to be only temporarily accessible to men. (98)

Women, though they do not wield the weapons, still have the power to dictate who will receive the weapons. For example, Excalibur belongs to the Lady of the Lake who claims ownership of it when Arthur wants it for his own: “’Sir Arthur,’ seyde the damsel, ‘that swerde ys myne, and if ye woll gyff me a gyffte whan I aske hit you, ye shall have hit” (Malory 35). The sword is hers, and it is hers to barter with in order to ask a favor—a gift—of Arthur at a later date. If it were not hers to trade, it could be argued, she would probably not be so quick to promise it away.

As the most obvious of the female figures in the tales of Arthur, Guinevere’s virtue lies in her beauty, as she holds the two most powerful men in the kingdom under the power of her beauty: Arthur, the king of England, and Lancelot, the greatest knight of the king’s court. Her beauty seems to have a magical element to it as a woman points out to Lancelot during one of his many adventures that “hit is noysed that ye love quene Guenyvere, and that she hath ordeyned by enchauntemente that ye shall never love none other but hir, nothing none other damesell ne lady shall rejoice you” (160 40-42). Though there is not mention of Guinevere practicing any kind of magical or enchanted arts, the implication speaks clearly of the power of her beauty and how it might affect both her husband and lover. Her use of her power seems to be limited to attaining a high station in life through her marriage to a king and maintaining that station through the work of her lover, Lancelot. Her beauty secures her queen-ship as Arthur tells Merlin he wishes to marry her because she “is the moste valyaunte and fayryst that I know lyvyng, or yet that ever I coude fynde” (59). Arthur marries her despite the warnings given to him by Merlin, arguably Arthur’s most trusted advisor, and enters the marriage with the knowledge that she and Lancelot are determined to be in love with one another. Though it is Arthur’s decision to follow through with this marriage despite the warnings and the knowledge of his wife’s eventual betrayal, it might also be seen as power that Guinevere has in her beauty. The reader is not told Guinevere’s reaction to being the object of the king’s affections, but it is not hard to imagine her being pleased at the prospect of marrying the powerful king of England, especially given that “Arranged marriages were the norm among the aristocracy and gentry in Malory’s day…Guinevere probably did not have to be coerced into marrying Arthur. He was a young king, renowned for his prowess and worship, and she might reasonably expect to grow to love him in time” (Kennedy 15).

Lancelot is also subject to Guinevere’s beauty, as it is he who maintains her position in the court. It is understood that no other knight can defeat Lancelot because he is the greatest knight in the world, and it is Lancelot who fights for Guinevere in place of Arthur on at least one occasion. For instance, when Lancelot is away, suffering Guinevere’s wrath, she has a dinner for the Knights of the Round Table, to show her appreciation for all of them. Unfortunately, there is an assassination plot on Gawain, and when it goes wrong, killing another knight, it is Guinevere who is blamed since she is the one who planned the dinner. Though the circumstances of the blame are unusual, and signal an environment of mistrust among the knightly brethren, what is more alarming is the mistrust directed at the wife of the king. Arthur cannot help her for his political ties as king, and even he suggests that Lancelot should be the one to defend her honor. Despite their earlier argument, and Guinevere’s seemingly characteristic unhappiness with him, Lancelot returns to defend her, and does so successfully. Lancelot is so in love with Guinevere, the woman he cannot have, that he passes up the opportunity to marry or otherwise secure the love of other eligible and beautiful women, such as the lady Elaine the Fair Maid of Astolat who kills herself for his love. Guinevere asks Lancelot why he did not show Elaine more mercy and his reply is succinct: “she wolde none other ways be answered but that she wolde be my wyff other ellis my paramour, and of thes two I wolde not graunte her…I love nat to be contrayned to love, for love muste only aryse of the harte self, and nat by none constraynte” (641). Lancelot is controlled by Guinevere’s beauty, at least to some extent, to go to such great lengths, even restoring her position as queen when their affair is alleged by Aggravayne and Mordred during the final chapter of Malory’s work.

Morgan le Fay is one of the more complex female roles in the Arthurian universe since, depending on the text, is sibling, friend, enemy, sorceress, enabler and disabler to Arthur. In Malory’s text she is cast in the role of villain, and her power obviously lies in the realm of magic and enchantment, which she wields over men to gain power over them. She is not the only woman who uses magic to her advantage, for the Lady of the Lake, Nyneve also does and traps Merlin who is trying to woo her. But there are differences in the way each woman uses her abilities:

If Morgan and Nyneve may be said to differ…it is a difference of intensity, rather than of kind. Nyneve…is more impersonal in her relations with the Arthurian world, less interested in its quotidian operations. Morgan…is intensely interested in the Arthurian ethos as a stage for her powers, and the disruptions she manufactures…point to a pleasure in their competitive display. (Heng 106)

Morgan takes pleasure in the control of men, and indeed does so at every opportunity she gets. She is one of the queens to pursues Lancelot to be his paramour (152), shortly after taking Accolon as a lover and using him to kill Arthur while she killed her own husband, only be stopped by her son, Uwayne (90 35-41). The Lady of the Lake, at least from the perspective of Arthur and his court, seems a more subtle, helpful influence on the activities of the court, while Morgan continues her disruptions throughout the story.

Morgan also deprives Arthur of the precious scabbard of Excalibur, which is supposed to keep him from ever losing blood (Malory 36). She steals into this chamber intending to steal the sword, but because the sword is “naked” in the hands of Arthur, she decided to take the scabbard instead, rather than risk waking him:

And she wente streyte unto his chamber…When the kynge awoke and myssid his scawberde, he was wroth, and so he asked who has bene there, and they sayde his sister, quene Morgan le Fay, had bene there and had put the scawberde undir hir mantel and is gone…’Sir,’ seyde they all, ‘we durst nat disobey your sistyrs commaundemente.’ (91)

The power she has over men is made evident in this passage for “we durste disobey,” which could be attributed to both her magic and to her place in the king’s family as his sister. Morgan is in control of Arthur’s fate at this point in the story, as she takes the scabbard and deprives him of his ability to spend an eternity on the English throne. Morgan, unlike Arthur, realizes the importance of the scabbard and it should be noticed that the power of Excalibur lies “not in blade but in the scabbard or sheath (Lat. vagina)” (Heng 98) and in depriving Arthur of his scabbard she is depriving him of an important connection and balance to the feminine world. This act could be interpreted as the beginning of the end with his wife, as his sword no longer has its sheath, he is also meant to lose the sheath to his own sword.

The power of women in the Arthurian world is not limited to that of Guinevere and Morgan. Many of the women in Arthur’s kingdom manage to control and manipulate their surroundings to their own benefit and ends. There are several examples of this in the story of Balin, the Knight with Two Swords. At the beginning of the story a damsel enters Arthur’s court in search of a great knight who can pull her sword out of her sheath. It is only evident later, through the help of Merlin, that the woman has asked the ladies of Avalon to help her have revenge on her brother by having part in the death of a great knight’s brother by use of that sword she is asking knights to pull out of the sheath. When Balin is successful in pulling the sword and refuses to give it back, even after the damsel’s request, she threatens him saying “ye ar nat wyse to kepe the swerde fro me, for ye shall sle with that swerde the beste frende that ye have and the man that ye moste love In the worlde, and that swerde shall be youre destruccion” (Malory 39-40). Through the use of these words and by this damsel seeking out the help of magical women to further her destructive cause, the damsel is creating her own destiny. It may not be the most chivalrous life, being that her mission is to bring destruction and revenge, and hers is certainly not an honorable cause, but she, unlike some of the other women of the court, is empowered to seek out what she feels is important.

Other women are given power by the author, since it is the death of these particular women that determine the fates of the knights who are involved. Again, from the story of Balin, the Lady of Sir Launceor kills herself upon her knight’s sword upon discovering his death at the hands of Balin, to which Merlin warns Balin how her death will affect the course of his adventure:

…because of the dethe of that lady [Launceor’s lady] thou shalt stryke a stroke moste dolorous that every man stroke, excepte the stroke of oure Lorde Jesu Cryste…and thorow that stroke three kyngdomys shall be brought into grete poverte, miseri and wrecchednesse twelve yere. And the knight shall nat be hole of that wounde many yerys. (45)

Still another example of a woman’s power after her death is found in the story of Torre and Pellinor, where Gawain is punished for the lack of mercy he shows toward another knight, yet instead of killing the knight: “Ryght so com hys lady oute of a chamber and felle over hym, and so he smote of hir hede by myssefortune” (66). The gruesome punishment that Gawain is forced to endure not only shows the extent to which Gawain suffers the torment of his lack of mercy, but also forces him to change the way he approaches both knights and women in the battle field since “sir Gawayne sworne upon the four Evaungelystis that he sholde never be ayenste lady ne jantillwoman but if he fight for a lady and hys adversary fyghtith for another” (67). Even after death women seem to have a power to change the fortune of knights, whether it be for better or for worse, and sometimes both.

While it is true that women have a limited role compared to the vast scope of the chivalric brotherhood, battlefield and honor code of the masculine realm of which they are a part of they do have significant powers in those realms they do control. Their realm is that of love, and a woman who can not only identify her lover, but also capture him and make him her knight, her paramour or her husband has truly mastered her womanhood. In taking advantage of what talents and skills they have, women are able to create for themselves a small part of their world that they can control. Like their control in the realm of love, as argued by Geraldine Heng,

…knightly obedience to and cooperation with the feminine supply effective means for actualizations of feminine will, creating an agency by which women may be active in the world. Knightly actions, where they are an extension of feminine will, are, in this sense, transparent, and have been describes as…the exploits of ladies through the medium of knights. (102)

It is through the interactions with the masculine and, ultimately, forging ties with the masculine realm that women are given power beyond that which is given them by their gender. Those women who cannot connect with the masculine realm, such as those women who learn magic, or those to betray the masculine realm, still manage to maintain a power unique to their gender. Men, on the other hand, must maintain a connection to the feminine in order to reach their full potential within their gender, be it through love, chivalry, or sex. Without the balance on the masculine side, the man falls victim to women and must suffer the wrath of those women who can control the realm that he is not only separate from, but has limited understanding of.

Works Cited

Fries, Maureen. "Female Heroes, Heroines, and Counter-Heroes: Images of Women in Arthurian Tradition." Arthurian Women: A Casebook. Ed. Thelma S. (ed and introd). Fenster. New York, NY: Garland, lxxvii, 1996. 59-73.

Heng, Geraldine. "Enchanted Ground: The Feminine Subtext in Malory." Arthurian Women: A Casebook. Ed. Thelma S. (ed and introd ). Fenster. New York, NY: Garland, lxxvii, 1996. 97-113.

Kennedy, Beverly. "Malory's Guenevere: A 'Trew Lover'." On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries. Ed. Bonnie (ed and foreword) Wheeler and Fiona (ed and foreword) Tolhurst. Dallas, TX: Scriptorium, xiii, 2001. 11-34.

Malory, Sir Thomas. Complete Works of Malory. Ed. Eugene Vinaver. 2^nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

ENL 168: "'Hurt Hawks' and the Balance of Man and Nature"

Jolene P. Brown

Dr. A. Williamson

English 168

5 June 2009

“Hurt Hawks” and the Balance of Man and Nature

Robinson Jeffers’ poem “Hurt Hawks” tells the tragic story of a speaker who finds and cares for an injured hawk. The hawk is wounded beyond healing, and the speaker watches as the hawk fights a battle with pain and death, yet somehow maintains life for six weeks before the speaker takes it upon himself to kill it out of mercy. The hawk, a symbol of strength, is weakened by the wing’s injury, and though the injury does not kill the hawk, it deprives it of its freedom since the hawk can no longer fly. The hawk is forced to wait for a slow, painful death since it will not be killed off by a predator as it can still defend itself with its talons. The reader watches as the speaker is driven to do the one thing he would rather not do: kill the hawk to save it from a fate worse than death; ending the agonizing depletion of strength from a creature that is the embodiment of that characteristic.

There are two parts to the poem, the first that outlines the hawks fall from grace, and the second that describes death and transcendence of nature beyond the death of the hawk. The speaker describes the sad state of the hawk in gruesome detail, describing the “clotted shoulder,” with “the bone too shattered for mending” (lines 1, 20). In the first part the hawk is shown to be both physically and psychologically injured as described in lines 7-8: “at night he remembers freedom / And flies in a dream, the dawn ruins it.” The speaker endows the hawk with a memory of the freedom he once had in the sky, a freedom that has been stripped from him by his crushed wing that simultaneously crushed his spirit. However, the hawk will not submit to humility as “no one but death the redeemer will humble that head” (11) and throughout the pain maintains his arrogance. This arrogance will not get him a quicker death, notes the speaker, since “The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those / That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant” (13-14). The first part describes an arrogant animal that will not submit death or humility, not even for a quicker death, and the speaker mourns the potential lost in the strength that once was.

The second part of the poem describes the continued decline of the hawk leading up to his eventual death at the hands of the remorseful speaker. The pain that the hawk endures is matched only by that of the speaker, who would “sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk” (18). The speaker does all that can be done, feeding it and allowing it the freedom to wander over the landscape outside of a cage. For six weeks, the speaker says, “He wandered over the foreland hill” only to return “in the evening, asking for death, / Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old / Implacable arrogance” (22-23). Even in his weakest moment the hawk maintains his arrogance, not even willing to beg for the death that he needs to leave behind the suffering of his crushed wing and subsequent confinement to land. The speaker describes the bullet as a “gift” which he gives to the hawk in the twilight of the evening, and the sound of the gun triggering a relaxing fall of “Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers” but also a soaring of “the night-herons by the flooded river” that “cried fear at its rising” (25-26). There is, then, both a rising and falling at the end of the poem: as the hawk falls into death, life continues on as other birds rise in life “before it [the hawk] was quite unsheathed from reality” (27).

There is an unusual word that occurs in the poem on line 10 that can be interpreted in several different ways with each interpretation giving new meaning to the passage.

He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At a distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant. (Lines 9-14)

The word “curs,” seems at first to be a typo, or some kind of error on the part of speaker or poet. However, analyzing the use of the word in the line through context, the word could be replaced by either ‘course’ or ‘curse.’ Each word would give a dramatic interpretation to the sentence in which it is employed. In the use of the word ‘course,’ the time that passes through the day, and the general course of events from the moment the sun rises to the next sunrise becomes a torment to the bird, that must suffer each moment without his wing. It also implies the course of suffering the bird must endure, through the shock of the injury, the pain and the realization and acceptance of the inevitability of death. When the word ‘curse’ is used instead, the day is personified: cursing the hawk either with the injury itself, with prolonged life despite the injury, or both. Both words help to express the hawk’s and the speaker’s unhappiness at the injury which is only made worse by the potential that the hawk once had. Further, the incapacity of the current state when compared to the former strength, freedom and arrogance, is even worse than the pain. The current state is a tragedy in the truest sense since all the potential is lost as the hawk must continue the course of pain and incapacity, and suffer the curse of incapacity without the immediate release death.

The hawk is a symbol of strength: “The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder, / The wing trails like a banner in defeat” (1-2). In the first line the speaker refers to the wing as a “pillar,” the source of architectural strength, and the metaphor is changed in the second line as the reader is told of the injury; suddenly the pillar is a “banner in defeat.” It is clear that the battle has ended for the hawk as not even the “cat nor coyote / Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons” (4-5) The implication is that the hawk still has the ability to fend off predators, but the predators will not do the hawk the honor of fighting him, since there is other meat to be had. The value that the hawk has as a warrior with honor is suddenly that which will keep him from dying, and ultimately is the same honor that will prevent him a swift warrior’s death. His honor is then lost with the injury as he is valueless even to predators as food.

The tone of the poem is affected a great deal by the poet’s use of free verse combined with long lines. The poem becomes more of a story, as the reader can imagine being told this story by someone who has experienced it first-hand, and it becomes a more personal experience for the reader. Consonance is used more in the first part of poem giving the reader a constant reminder of the jagged pain of the hawk, and the unsettling feeling experienced by the speaker. The word ‘strong’ is used twice in line 9 emphasizing the importance of strength to the creature and how the speaker admires this quality in the hawk. In the second part of the poem, assonance is the emphasis with descriptions such as “implacable arrogance” (24), “eyed with the old” (23), which soothes the ear in preparation for the death to come. There is still consonance, however, and the contrast between the two maintains an uncertain tone leading to a repetition of ‘r’ sounds in the last two lines allowing for a sound of closure at the end of the poem.

The poem is representative of the relationship between man and nature. The title itself implies a larger scope of meaning, since the word “hawks” in the title implies a plurality that does not exist in the poem. This absence generously opens the scope of the interpretation to metaphor applying itself easily to nature. The hawk as a symbol for nature embodies all those characteristics important for the survival of all creatures: strength, honor, glory, arrogance and grace but these things are not permanent and can be lost quickly, without warning. The poem makes no mention of how the hawk was injured, this cause itself is irrelevant to the point the poet is trying to make. The injury weakens the bird, but does not strip it of all its qualities since it can still defend itself from predators and arrogantly defy death. It takes the work of man to allow the creature passage into a world without pain, but even the death of the hawk cannot put a stop to nature as the flock of birds react to the sound of the gift-bullet and take to the sky. The fall of one bird leading to the rise of an entire flock: in helping with death there is a birth of life.

Works Cited

Jeffers, Robinson. “Hurt Hawks.” The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2, third edition. Editors: Jahan Rmazanin, et. al. W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2003. Pages 416-417.