"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." - Lord Acton.

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 “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” - Lord Acton. This is often true, especially when some of the most powerful rulers such as Hitler and Mussolini were bloodthirsty and merciless dictators. To many, Stalin was the epitome of a sadistic, power-hungry tyrant, in complete control. As it is often the powerless who want freedom, the world gets divided into the ones in power, the ones trying to gain power, and the ones rebelling against absolute power. Ted Hughes is a poet who uses animals to portray human emotions, such as greed and ambition. He personifies inanimate objects and emotions to bring across his message. In his poem ‘Hawk Roosting’, Hughes speaks in first person, the hawk as the speaker. His personal views, on many occasions clash with those of the hawk, which in my opinion is affective as it shows how the poet differs from his subject.

In the first stanza, the poet very quickly takes us into the poem, by giving us an image of the hawk. It seems as though the speaker, the hawk, is indifferent about the reader’s presence as he’s asleep. The hawk appears to be in control, as he’s higher than anyone and anything else, ‘I sit in the top of the wood’. Also, he shows he feels he’s invulnerable, and immortal, as if nothing can hurt him, ‘with my eyes closed’. The first stanza introduces the reader to the hawk’s attitude to life, explaining that he feels he’s living his dream, and that his reality is as good as anybody’s dream, ‘inaction, no falsifying dream’. There is also a clear description of the physical appearance of the hawk, streamlined and sleek. The fact that the poet mentions the hawk’s head and feet, ‘between my hooked head and my hooked feet’, shows that the speaker, the hawk, sees himself as streamlined from the top to the bottom, and mentions the basic animal hunting tools, the claws and the beak. This suggests that although the hawk appears to have human emotions, the hawk itself, is merely an animal built for survival through hunting. The air of arrogance and control is already apparent, as the hawk, instead of sleeping like a ordinary animal, plans and perfects his kills; controlling sleep, therefore controlling nature, ‘in sleep rehearsing perfect kills and eat’. The fact that he refers to ‘kills’ in plural, and ‘eat’ in singular is unusual and suggests that he kills not only to survive, but sees it as an art; a skill to perfect and develop.

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In the second stanza, the reader is given an image of the hawk’s surroundings and environment. The poet highlights that the hawk is in control, through the description of the surroundings. Rather than describing what is there, Hughes describes the way the speaker, the hawk, sees everything, through the eyes of the hawk. By describing the advantages of the situation first, the poet starts off the stanza by putting the hawk in complete control of his surroundings, as if he’s in harmony with nature, almost controlling it to his advantage, ‘the convenience of the high trees!’ The fact that the ...

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