Hawk Roosting Power

Compare how ideas about power are conveyed in Hawk Roosting and one other poem?

The effects of power seem to be largely psychological in both poems. In Futility the damage down by power makes Owen question everything: mostly it makes him question our existence and the point too our lives; whereas in Hawk Roosting the hawk believes there’s no need for other predator’s existence as nature is “all” his and “no arguments can assert” his right to his power to kill. Owen wonders “was it for this the clay grew tall?” Here he shows in this ma-made war, he cannot see god or the point to existence. Additionally science gives him no comfort as the sun gives conditions on earth to give the ability to generate life and to Owen it makes all this work seem pointless. This leaving Owen desperate for answers and
despondent on life as the normality of life has been destroyed by the power war has.
Hughes had opposite effects to power as power makes the hawk arrogant and this making the pointlessness in other animals. The hawk wishes to “keep things like this” and although we know this is about the hawk wanting to keep himself at the top of the food chain, I cannot help but sense a deeper meaning that Hughes uses this to make the reader desperate for answers, similarly to Owen, to the hawks existence and the answer to that is to kill but then that leads to the idea what can kill the hawk and that is man, who destroyed the point of existence in Futility with the abuse of power to create war, now I cannot help but see the power of the hawk reduced and now he seems to have a pointlessness existence. The effects of power leave contrasting images of confusing of existence and the arrogance of existence, though both eventually have proved to have a profound sense of pointlessness in
life, and this being a psychological emotion that is heavily felt throughout both poems.

Lastly both poets use natural images to show power and the results it can have. Hughes uses the natural images to show power through the hawk’s violence as possibly a good thing as it can promote life. The hawk has a “direct flight” through the “bones of the living.” Bones that are crushed can be used as a fertilizer and this means the hawks killings aren’t just producing death but also producing life and showing you need death to leave, so here nature is produced by the power of the hawk to kill, which is different in Futility. Nature does not offer consolation, solace or hope; it simply reminds him of the pointlessness of life when power is abused to create war. The sun, a powerful and evocative image of life has no power here. “Half-sown” fields also remind Owen of the wasted potential of the dead soldier’s life; he is reminded that nature is powerless and pointless against an abuse of power. Showing whilst nature may be left, this is a cold comfort to Owen whereas it comforts and protects Hughes.