Hurt Hawks (Historical Context)

Historical Context

Jeffers was born in 1887 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was tutored by his father, a Presbyterian preacher and theologian, in various languages, the classics, and the Bible before being sent to boarding schools in Switzerland and Germany. Following his graduation in 1905 from Occidental College in Highland Park, California, at the age of 17, Jeffers earned a master’s degree in literature from the University of Southern California; he later spent several years studying medicine at USC and forestry at the University of Washington. A modest inheritance enabled Jeffers and his wife to settle on an isolated plot of coastal land in Carmel, California, where he built a stone house and tower overlooking the Pacific Ocean and devoted himself to his art.

The 1920s, the decade in which Jeffers wrote “Hurt Hawks,” was a period of exploration and vision. Many noted “lost generation” writers like Ernest Hemingway traveled the world in search of purpose and inspiration. During this decade Charles Lindbergh also completed the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight, Albert Hegenberger made the first successful flight from San Francisco to Hawaii, and Amelia Earhart scouted her first transatlantic flight as a passenger with two other pilots. Contrary to this national fever for travel and exploration, Jeffers instead chose move his family to Southern California, build a granite house by hand, and live isolated on a remote rocky shore. Jeffers spent the rest of his life there composing books and philosophical essays until his death in 1962. Poems such as “Hurt Hawks” exemplify Jeffers’s antisocial convictions and a deeper trust in the natural world than in the booming economy and populace of the United States. While across the country, Wonder Bread was making its debut and “He’s got the Whole World in his Hands” was the nation’s favorite song, Jeffers sat in his stone tower and accused society of small-mindedness, using religion as a dying convenience, and living in artificial and unsustainable cities of concrete and steel. While the nation experienced sweeping changes and transition between postwar prosperity and the coming Depression of 1929, Jeffers, angry and eccentric, averred that he’d “rather, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk.”

Compare & Contrast

• 1928: Transatlantic telephone service begins between London and New York, costing $25 per minute and restricted to 3 minutes total duration.
• Today: The internet, or World Wide Web, provides nearly instant communication and distribution of information over an international network of telephone lines and satellites. Service providers charge private individuals around $15 per month for unlimited access through their personal computers.
• 1928: Television technology debuts in the auditorium of New York’s Bell Telephone Labs. In a demonstration that is more like a video conference than television as we know it today, this first demonstration enabled audience members to watch Herbert Hoover address them from Washington, D.C., while his hearing his voice over telephone wires.
• Today: Businesses, universities, and classrooms widely use integrated video conferencing systems for distance learning, employee training, and political debates.
• 1928: Police arrest more than 75,000 people for drinking alcohol, which is outlawed during the Prohibition Era. Some 1,565 Americans die from drinking toxic homemade liquor, hundreds are blinded, and many are killed in bootlegger wars.
• Today: Alcohol companies advertise widely on television, radio, and in the print media, convincing the nation that any cause for celebration is “Miller Time.” Multimillion-dollar promotional campaigns closely link alcohol with professional sports and America’s youth. Over 100,000 Americans die each year of alcohol poisoning alone; countless others are injured or killed in alcohol-related auto accidents and domestic violence arising from alcoholism.