Let’s recap... do you remember the story’s plot?
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“A Kestrel for a knave” is a book about Billy, a young boy who lives in a humble home with his bully brother, and unconcerned mother. Unfortunately, Billy’s school doesn’t make his life any easier, most of his teachers don’t understand him, and instead of helping the boy, they reprimand him frequently. Even though suffering both physical and emotional mistreatment, there is hope in Billy’s life when he finds a hawk up in a nest. He takes care of it, and even goes to a library to find a book to read about Hawks in order to know how to treat them right. Billy’s expectations were to train this hawk, and he really manages to do so. So we can infer that it is the hawk that brings light to his life, perhaps a new meaning for it. Ironically, he becomes more attached to “Kes” than he is for his mother and Jud.
Well, the story itself wasn’t so much about encouraging Billy to have a better life nor to increase and develop his self-confidence and self-esteem. So, by the end of the story it doesn’t get any better. Billy makes a mistake by not betting to the horses Jud had asked him to bet for. Why? Billy innocently thought the horses wouldn’t win, so instead he used the money for buying food for “kES”. As far as I know, Jud was not known for his serenity, that is why I was not surprised of what he did. Jud took revenge on his brother for making him loose money by killing “Kes”.
As soon as Billy finds out, he is devastated; the one thing he felt passionate about was gone. Then, when he is going to bury Kes, he goes to Mr. Farthing’s house to tell him the news. He had always been nice to him, and he showed interest when finding out about his hawk, so he felt he needed to be in the burial. The teacher is really upset that Jud would have done such an atrocity, I suddenly he closes his eyes. Later on, Mr. Farthing tells Billy there is something he can do, he had studied dark magic west of North of Scotland and he knew what to do in order to make Kes return to life. Billy was astonished and listened to his teacher’s plan: they would bring back Kes and then he would take both of them out of the country. Moreover, Billy didn’t like to live with his family anyway and they would think he had run away from home. Mr. Farthing takes Kes into his basement and starts reading his spells. Billy was astonished when he realizes that after 10 minutes his companion started to move and open his eyes. He felt alive again; no one would drift them apart again. Mr. Farthing was really tired, so he went to bed and let them stay. The next morning they got up, made the bags and set to a new adventure in
Wales.
