Jane Cooper, Hyena for National 5

HYENA

This poem, like Slate and Winter, deals with nature, or the natural environment. Getting in Before you read the poem, think about these questions:

1. What is your favourite animal? What do you like about it?

2. Which animals do you find frightening? Why do you feel this way about them?

3. Are there any animals you find disturbing or disgusting? Why do you feel this way about them?

Meeting the text You are about to read a five-stanza poem narrated by an animal. As you read it for the first time, do this:

1. Count how many times the narrator uses the word ‘I’.

2. In which stanza is the word ‘I’ used most?

3. Count how many times the narrator uses the word ‘you’.

4. In which stanza is the word ‘you’ used most?

5. Circle any words which are new to you and for which you need an explanation.

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© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the author Downloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learn

Jane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

HYENA I am waiting for you. I have been travelling all morning through the bush and not eaten. I am lying at the edge of the bush on a dusty path that leads from the burnt-out kraal. 5 I am panting, it is midday, I found no water-hole. I am very fierce without food and although my eyes are screwed to slits against the sun you must believe I am prepared to spring. What do you think of me? 10 I have a rough coat like Africa. I am crafty with dark spots like the bush-tufted plains of Africa. I sprawl as a shaggy bundle of gathered energy like Africa sprawling in its waters. 15 I trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger. I hunch my shoulders. I eat the dead. Do you like my song? When the moon pours hard and cold on the veldt I sing, and I am the slave of darkness. 20 Over the stone walls and the mud walls and the ruined places and the owls, the moonlight falls. I sniff a broken drum. I bristle. My pelt is silver. I howl my song to the moon - up it goes. Would you meet me there in the waste places? 25

It is said I am a good match for a dead lion. I put my muzzle at his golden flanks, and tear. He Is my golden supper, but my tastes are easy. I have a crowd of fangs, and I use them. 30 Oh and my tongue - do you like me When it comes lolling out over my jaw very long, and I am laughing? I am not laughing. But I am not snarling either, only 35 panting in the sun, showing you what I grip carrion with.

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I am waiting for the foot to slide, 40 for the heart to seize, for the leaping sinews to go slack, for the fight to the death to be fought to the death, for a glazing eye and a rumour of blood. I am crouching in my dry shadows 45 till you are ready for me. My place is to pick you clean and leave your bones to the wind.

Edwin Morgan Thinking through

First, share your answers to the first four ‘Meeting the text’ questions you were given at the start of the poem.

Next, check that everyone understands all the vocabulary in the poem. If there is a word you don’t know, somebody else in the class may be able to explain it. You can miss out kraal and veldt for now: we’ll deal with those particular words later.

Then, make a list of everything everyone in your class knows, or thinks they know, about hyenas.

Finally, be honest: how much of what you knew was learned from watching The Lion King?

So, before we start to look at Morgan’s ideas, and at the techniques he uses to put them across, it might be useful to find out a little about hyenas.

Facts about hyenas Beliefs about hyenas

Most hyenas are found in sub-Saharan Africa, where they live in drier environments such as savannah, bushland and desert. Hyenas get their food by hunting and by scavenging. They have extremely strong jaws in relation to their body size and have a very highly acidic digestive system. This combination means they can eat and digest almost their entire prey, including skin, teeth, horns and bones. Anything that they cannot digest is regurgitated.

Because their digestive system deals very well with bacteria, they will readily eat carrion – dead meat that they find by scavenging.

There are many negative traditional beliefs about hyenas. These ideas probably arose because hyenas were known to scavenge in graves for food. (They are very well suited to this because of their ability to consume and digest almost every part of a body.)

Many cultures associate hyenas with qualities such as extreme greed, uncleanness and cowardice.

Hyenas’ haunting, laughter-like calls inspired the idea in local cultures that they could imitate human voices and call their victims by name. Hyenas are also sometimes thought to be used by demons and witches. In African folklore, witches and sorcerers are thought to ride on hyenas or even to turn into them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestive_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witches

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa

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LET’S GET TO WORK As we study this poem we’ll think look especially at how Morgan gives a speaking voice, and a personality, to an animal that cannot, in real life, communicate with humans.

First of all, you need to know what kind of poem this is. In fact, Morgan is making use of two types of poetry here, dramatic monologue and poem of address.

Dramatic monologue

All those uses of the word ‘I’ that you counted when you first read the poem help us to realise that ‘Hyena’ is a dramatic monologue narrated in first person. The word monologue tells us that there is only one person – or rather, in this case, one hyena - talking. The speaker carries on uninterrupted, rather than taking part in a conversation. The word dramatic means that the speaker is not on his own and talking to himself, but that someone else is supposed to be there listening. We are never meant to think that the speaker in a dramatic monologue is the voice of the poet. The speaker is a distinct character that the author has invented. This kind of character is sometimes called a persona. The difference between an author and his persona is like the difference between an actor and his character. One brings the other to life, but that doesn’t mean that we think one is the other. We’ll spend much of this chapter looking at how Morgan puts across the persona of the hyena.

One feature of dramatic monologues is that their speakers often let slip some of their nastier or more unpleasant thoughts, habits or actions. As we study this poem, we’ll see how Morgan gets the hyena to do this. Here’s what Morgan said about this form of poetry:

‘I think a lot of my poetry is either a straight or some disguised form of dramatic monologue, and I quite often do try to give an animal a voice . . . I feel that the whole world is able to express something’

It was a form he used a lot. He wrote poems in which he gave speaking voices to an apple, an Egyptian mummy, a space module, a mountain, the Loch Ness monster, a centaur, men from planet Mercury, trees, a shadow, and a pair of cats. Poem of address All those uses of the word ‘you’ that you counted when you first read the poem help us to realise that ‘Hyena’ is also a poem of address. This is a poem in which the narrator, or the poet, is talking to – addressing – someone or something. In this poem the hyena is talking directly to us, the readers. We know this from the very first line,

‘I am waiting for you.’ However he’s going a little bit further too. It is as if we, the readers, are standing in for and representing the whole of humanity. So, by talking to us, the hyena can say what he wants to say to all humans, and can show what he thinks of all humans. You may have noticed already that he does not seem to have a very high opinion of us.

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Stanza 1

We’ve already seen that the hyena is addressing us, the readers, in his first line. He says he’s ‘waiting’ for us. When you bear in mind that hyenas are hunters, and eaters of the dead, this is quite threatening – he’s not waiting for us to sit down and have a nice cup of tea with him. He’s waiting to eat us.

This opening line is what’s called a memento mori, which means a reminder of death. Painters used to sometimes hide a skull, or some bones, in a picture to remind those who looked at it that, no matter how important and powerful the person in the picture was, death would still come and get them in the end. This was called a memento mori. The hyena’s words here are a memento mori, as is the hyena himself. We may think we’re important, but we’ll all die.

Throughout the stanza the hyena continually repeats his opening ‘I am.’ This makes him sound terribly arrogant and sure of himself. He is the centre of his own little universe. Despite this, the hyena might not seem too scary at first, because of the condition that he’s in.

ACTIVE LEARNING Prove, by using quotations from this verse:

1. that the hyena is tired

2. that he is hungry

3. that he is thirsty

4. that he is hot

5. that he can hardly see

However the hyena wants us to know that he is still dangerous. He tells us in line 7 that he is ‘very fierce without food’, so his hunger actually makes him more treacherous, not less. The stanza ends with a threat, just as it started with one, when the hyena tells us: ‘you must believe I am prepared to spring.’

Morgan’s use of sound effects in this part of the stanza draws our attention to the hyena’s challenge. Look again at the last three lines. The hyena tells us:

I am very fierce without food

We are made to focus on his words by the alliteration of f sounds in ‘fierce without food’ and by the alliteration of s sounds in:

although my eyes are screwed to slits against the sun you must believe I am prepared to spring.

In fact as well as the s sounds at the starts of these words, there are many others at the ends of words and in the middles. This repetition of s sounds in many places, not just at the starts of words, is called sibilance. All these sound effects work together to make us pay attention to how dangerous the hyena is. He’s in charge. He tells us what to think: ‘you must believe.’

There are other ways too that he comes across as threatening. He tells us he is lying ‘on a dusty path that leads from the burnt-out kraal’. A ‘kraal’ is a traditional African village consisting of a group of huts surrounded by a fence. If the hyena is lying in wait on the path from the kraal into

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the bush then maybe he is cunning enough and nasty enough to wait for scared survivors escaping the fire, so that he can kill and eat them.

The word ‘kraal’ is one of few African words used in the poem. Did you know what it meant before it was explained to you? The hyena knows. He is the expert and you, the reader, are at a disadvantage. His use of terms we may not understand shows that he is superior to us.

The burnt-out kraal has further significance, depending how the fire started.

If the fire began by accident If the fire was started deliberately

Humans, even native Africans, are vulnerable. They need shelter to survive, so they build houses, but these can be easily destroyed.

Therefore the hyena is superior to us because he does not need a house and can cope perfectly well in the natural environment.

or

Humans are violent and destructive. They try to destroy their enemies. They kill out of anger and hatred, or to become more powerful than others. They are deliberately vicious.

Therefore the hyena is superior to us. When he kills he only does this to satisfy his hunger, and he often eats what is already dead, without actually taking life at all.

Stanza 2

This stanza begins with a question, ‘What do you think of me?’ It is the first time the hyena has asked us for an opinion. By this point in the poem he has already said quite a lot to us, much of it fairly threatening. So, any answer we can think of may not truly be our own opinion: he has influenced what we think of him.

Similes

ACTIVE LEARNING There are three similes in this stanza. (Remember, a simile is when one thing is compared to another using the word like or the word as.)

Find the three similes and write them down

What do all these similes have in common?

By continually comparing himself, or parts of himself, to Africa, the hyena makes himself sound as important as an entire continent.

This arrogance goes with the many uses of ‘I am’ we saw in stanza 1, and there’s another ‘I am’ and lots more uses of ‘I’ in this stanza. Not only does the comparison to Africa make him sound significant, it also makes him seem very well-fitted to his environment of bush-tufted plains and sprawling waters. He is supremely well evolved, and we humans are weak in comparison.

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Sound effects

ACTIVE LEARNING

You’ll need your own copy of the poem on paper to do this short task. Read through this stanza and circle every time the letter a is used as the only vowel between two consonants.

How many did you find?

Now think about when you go to the dentist, or the doctor, and you get asked to say ‘Ah’. All these a vowel sounds are quite open, quite relaxing. They tie in with the fact that the hyena is quite relaxed: he sprawls, he lopes. This is all quite deceptive however. The ‘gathered energy’ in line 14 is another reminder of how he is prepared to spring.

Sentence structure

The relaxed vowels also lull us, so that the very blunt, short, last sentence with its strong, final t and d consonants ‘I eat the dead’ seems even more shocking.

The last two lines of this stanza contain six very short statements.

1. I trot 2. I lope 3. I slaver 4. I am a ranger

5. I hunch my shoulders 6. I eat the dead

Though the first four statements join up to form longer sentence in the poem, every one of the six statements could stand as a sentence in its own right. This use of short statements again underlines how sure of himself, how definite, the hyena is. Some are threats too: he is slavering, his mouth is watering at the thought of eating something soon, perhaps us!

Stanza 3

The hyena asks four questions in the poem. We already saw one at the start of stanza 2; the second and third questions are here in stanza 3, starting in the opening line of the stanza with ‘Do you like my song?’

This is a euphemism, a gentle way of saying something unpleasant, like saying someone has ‘passed away’ rather than using the word ‘died’. The hyena does eventually use a blunter and more honest word ‘howl’ in line 24, but by the time we get there we have already seen him use ‘sing’ in line 20 and he immediately follows up ‘howl’ with ‘song’ in line 24. Again, we see his arrogance – as far as he’s concerned it’s a song and he doesn’t care if we think it sounds like howling.

In this stanza we see his second use of an African word, ‘veldt’ which means an area of open grassland. He makes it sound like a forbidding place when he says that ‘The moon pours hard and cold on the veldt.’ Morgan is doing something quite clever here. The moon is often used in poetry to suggest romance and beauty, but he subverts this usual stereotype by his use of ‘hard and cold’. This isn’t the romantic civilised world, it’s the hyena’s more brutal one.

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The hyena says that when he sings at night he is ‘the slave of darkness’. This word choice has connotations of evil, as if he’s some kind of vampire or monster, something dark and horrifying.

But, just as he did in verse 1, the hyena immediately turns the tables on us. Remember that he is waiting near the burnt-out kraal. He mentions this again now as: ‘the ruined places.’ He tells us ‘I sniff a broken drum.’ If there had only been an accidental fire, the drum might be burnt, but the fact that it is ‘broken’ suggests deliberate, planned, human destruction of the homes of other human beings. Once more, just when we think the hyena is really nasty, he reminds us of how evil and dangerous we humans can be.

The ‘broken drum’ is also a metaphor. The drum was once alive and vibrant, throbbing with life and music. Now it is lying around for the hyena to sniff at. We could see this as a metaphor for the kind of dead bodies the hyena likes to find and eat – once full of life, now just empty and broken.

His word choice in ‘my pelt is silver’ makes him seem like something precious and valuable, much better than the ‘mud walls’ and ‘broken drum’ that are evidence of human life.

The stanza ends with the poem’s third question: ‘Would you like to meet me there in the waste places?’ What’s your answer?

Stanza 4

Hyenas can and do hunt but are better known for scavenging, and this one seems to admit this when he tells us he is ‘a good match for a dead lion’ – he’d have no chance against a live one. There’s a little bit of self-deprecating humour here when he says this. He can afford a little joke at his own expense when he knows he’ll win in the end anyway.

We see repetition here as the hyena twice describes the lion as ‘golden’. He told us he himself was ‘silver’ in the previous stanza – again not as good as the lion. But the lion cannot chose what happens to it after death, when the hyena is free to ‘tear’ it to pieces. As a final insult, although our narrator seems happy enough with his ‘golden supper’ he then says, ‘but my tastes are easy.’ He’ll eat anything; he’s not even particularly impressed to be dining on such a magnificent creature.

The word choice of ‘fangs’ in line 30 has connotations of being sharp, pointed and violent, and it ties in with the slightly vampirish idea we had in stanza 3 when he said he was a ‘slave of darkness.’

The middle part of this stanza is taken up by the hyena’s fourth and final question. Now that we’ve seen all of these questions, let’s consider why he asks them. Here they are again:

1 What do you think of me? 2 Do you like my song? 3 Would you like to meet me there in the waste places?

and now the last one:

4 Oh and my tongue – do you like me When it comes lolling out over my jaw very long and I am laughing?

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He seems in the first three questions to be caught somewhere between wanting us to like him, and wanting us to fear him. But then we realise that he is not really very interested in our answers because he thinks we’re wrong anyway. He answers the last question for us: ‘I am not laughing.’ He goes on to say ‘But I am not snarling either only panting in the sun’. He seems almost unwilling to waste his energy on snarling at us, when all he needs to do to terrify us is to let us see his ‘crowd of fangs’ which are ‘what I grip carrion with.’ If he gets the chance, he’ll eat us too, just as he’ll eat a dead lion.

Stanza 5

The opening line of this last stanza repeats the beginning of the first one: ‘I am waiting.’ The use of this phrase at the start and end of the poem emphasises the hyena’s patience, as if he knows he’ll get us in the end, so it acts as another memento mori, another reminder that we will all die.

What is he waiting for? Lots of things:

for the foot to slide, for the heart to seize, for the leaping sinews to go slack, for the fight to the death to be fought to the death, for a glazing eye and a rumour of blood.

This list tells us that there are many, many ways for death to come. The way it happens can change, but death itself is inevitable. The hyena warns us ‘I am crouching in my dry shadows/ till you are ready for me.’ He owns his environment, and has time to wait. The last two lines throw out a challenge to us:

‘My place is to pick you clean and leave your bones to the wind.’

The expression ‘my place’ makes it sound as if the hyena has been given a role, even a duty, and that he is meant to do what he does. He will outlast us, and our bones will be left to the wind. How does that make you feel?

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The overall message

Different readers have looked at this poem in different ways. They do seem to agree on one point, which could be summed up like this:

The message of this poem is: don’t get delusions of grandeur; don’t start to think that you are wonderful.

From there, you can take the idea in two directions.

1

2 Some readers think that the hyena himself has delusions of grandeur.

He thinks he is an awesome beast, and something to be terrified of. He is a legend in his own mind.

However, he is only fierce when his enemy is dead. He’s like someone who thinks himself a magnificent footballer, but actually only ever plays against five-year-olds.

The poem finally condemns the hyena for thinking he’s wonderful when he’s just a cowardly scavenger

or

Some readers think the poem warns us humans not to have delusions of grandeur.

The hyena is there to remind us that in the end we’ll all be dead, and all our achievements come to an end.

His references to human violence when he mentions the burnt out kraal warn us not to have too high an opinion of ourselves because humans are basically destructive and violent.

The poem finally condemns us for thinking we are the pinnacle of evolution when we’re just vicious and violent.

ACTIVE LEARNING Decide which of these two explanations you agree with.

Spend five minutes making notes and collecting quotations from the poem to back up your chosen interpretation.

Then find someone who believes the other way of looking at the poem. Try to change each other’s minds.

This is a good moment to take stock of your work on this poem. The following tasks will help you check you’ve understood the poem, and also allow you to think of it as a whole after our stanza-by-stanza study.

ACTIVE LEARNING This poem is rich in sensory details. Quote:

1. any two details connected to the sense of sight

2. any two details connected to the sense of hearing

3. any two details connected to the sense of taste

4. any two details connected to the sense of touch

5. any two details connected to the sense of smell

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ACTIVE LEARNING Look back at the table near the start of this chapter where you saw facts and superstitions about hyenas.

1. Which, if any, of the facts does Morgan seem to be referring to in his poem? For each fact you think he refers to, find a quotation and explain how that quotation shows the writer picking up on the fact.

2. Which, if any, of the superstitions and beliefs does Morgan seem to be referring to? For each belief you think he refers to, find a quotation and explain how the quotation shows the writer picking up on that belief.

ACTIVE LEARNING The critic Colin Nicholson says that Morgan presents the hyena as ‘an unnervingly rational figure of death.’ Try these tasks:

1. Using at least two quotations from the poem to support what you say, write a paragraph to explain how the hyena comes across as an unnerving character, a character who unsettles or disturbs us.

2. Using at least two quotations from the poem to support what you say, write a paragraph to explain how the hyena comes across as a rational character, a character whose ideas and arguments seem logical, at least in the world of the poem.

3. Using at least two quotations to support what you say, write a paragraph to explain how the hyena comes across as a figure of death.

4. Now work with a partner if you can. Try to prove, again using at least two quotations from the poem, that Morgan does have at least something positive to say about the hyena.

5. Still working with your partner, prove that Morgan can also make the reader feel sympathy for the hyena.

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ACTIVE LEARNING The poem is narrated by a hyena, and seems to be all about him. Write a paragraph to explain how the poem is also about humans, and about what we are like.

Technique revision Now that you’ve worked your way through the material about ‘Hyena’ you should know the poem, and its techniques, very well.

Take a large piece of paper and mark it up into a grid. For every technique, fill in a quotation from the poem, and explain the effect it has on the reader. For a grid about ‘Hyena’ you need to work with the following techniques:

deal separately with the connotations of each of these expressions: slave of darkness, silver, fangs

repetition of I (am), you, golden, I am waiting

picking up on known facts about hyenas

picking up on beliefs and superstitions about hyenas

dramatic monologue poem of address

alliteration of f sounds and of s sounds African words

use of t and d consonant sounds use of a vowel sounds

persona sibilance metaphor

list memento mori euphemism

humour questions short statements

subverting usual poetry stereotypes

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THE SCOTTISH TEXT QUESTIONS

If you have studied all three of the poems about the natural world, ‘Hyena’, ‘Slate’ and ‘Winter’, you can also now try the Scottish set text questions about this poem.

First, re-read ‘Hyena’ and answer these questions:

1. Show how any two of the poet’s techniques in stanzas one and two convey the hyena’s beliefs about himself. 4

2. Show how any two of the poet’s techniques in stanzas one and two convey the hyena’s opinions of humanity. 4

3. How effective do you find any two aspects of the final stanza as a conclusion to the poem? Your answer may deal with ideas and/ or language. 4

The last question is worth 8 marks and needs a much bigger answer. If you want to get 5 marks or more for the 8-mark final question, you MUST compare this poem to two other poems – probably ‘Slate’ and ‘Winter’.

You can, if you wish, tackle this as a kind of mini essay. It’s also possible to approach this question by giving a set of bullet pointed answers that all fit together to form a complete response.

Here’s the question:

4. With close textual reference, show how the ideas and/ or language of this poem are similar to another poem or poems by Morgan that you have read. 8

When you have written your answers, give them to your teacher to mark.

Documents

Jane Cooper, Hyena for National 5