Barry Hines: A Kestrel for a Knave

Barry Hines: A Kestrel for a Knave

The novel ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’, by Barry Hines, is set in 1968 in a

Northern industrial estate. It is about a boy named Billy Casper who

is under pressure at home and struggling in school. The only time when

he can get away is when he escapes to the countryside to experience

nature in all its glory. The title of the novel is a sort of

play-on-words, as in medieval times there was a group of people called

knaves who were, like Billy in the novel, the lowest class of people

around. Their bird to hunt was a kestrel hawk, and in the novel Billy

finds a kestrel hawk and trains it. The author, Barry Hines, uses a

lot of contrast in the early stages of the story to emphasise the

difference between Billy’s underprivileged life and the lives of more

upper class people.

Billy’s house is cramped, dirty, uncomfortable and generally not a

very nice environment for Billy to grow up in. His family are poor and

Billy has to share a bed with his older brother Jud – we can tell that

there is one bed by the description, ‘The wardrobe and bed were

blurred shapes in the darkness’. His family can’t even afford curtains

for the bedroom, ‘There were no curtains up.’ They don’t have central

heating and have to depend on a fire for both heat and light every

day. They can barely afford to feed themselves, which is evident by

what Billy finds in the pantry, ‘a packet of dried peas and a half

bottle of vinegar’. It is clear that there is no car in their garage

when it says that Billy ‘kicked a can of oil the length of the

garage’. This is completely different to the countryside, which is

clean and seems to be Billy’s place to get away from his home and

school life. When Billy is in the countryside in the early hours of

the morning the air takes a ‘fresher, sharper quality’. The way that

the countryside descriptions are written no bad points are shown about