The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life

About the book

Carl Ericson grows up with expectations that cannot satisfy his curiosity about the wider world. Education, travel, employment, and aviation offer successive possibilities, but movement alone does not settle the question of how to live. Lewis follows the excitement of new places and occupations while testing the habits that make freedom difficult to sustain. The novel's subtitle, A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life, captures its willingness to treat ambition with both sympathy and irony. Relationships complicate the dream of unrestricted independence, asking whether companionship must mean confinement. This is an early Lewis novel, distinct in emphasis from his later portraits of established American communities. Its appeal lies in the energy of a character who keeps trying to reconcile making a living with feeling alive.

• Freedom and work
• Restlessness
• Love and independence

Why read it

For an energetic early novel about the practical difficulty of turning a desire for freedom into a livable life.

English novel · 1915 text