A Kestrel For A Knave

The novel ends by reinforcing The Dangers of Equating Vulnerability With Weakness. When Billy senses that something may have happened to Kes, he quickly deduces that it has something to do with Jud and goes to the betting shop for information. Billy’s decision not to place the bet cost Jud a significant amount of money, but back home, Jud is aloof, pretending that nothing happened. It becomes clear that he is guilty and worries about what he has done to Billy, but he doesn’t have the capacity to express this. All he can do is withdraw and express hostility. His toxic masculinity and fear of vulnerability is so all-consuming that he is incapable of expressing his regret. Meanwhile, Mother is wholly detached from the situation. When Billy goes to her for emotional comfort, she waves him away, embarrassed at the display of vulnerability. Billy, invalidated and punished for expressing his hurt, resorts to the one form of emotional expression that toxic masculinity sanctions: rage. This shows the cyclical nature of anger and restrictive definitions of manliness, as Jud and Mother’s reinforcement of gender dynamics have forced Billy to act in a way he doesn’t want to act.

After fleeing to an abandoned building, Billy mourns Kes and has a series of flashbacks and visions. The first flashback is from the day his father left after discovering Mother’s infidelity. Though his father’s relationship with Mother was over, there was no reason for him not to remain in Billy and Jud’s life. However, Billy’s father’s toxic masculinity meant that access to those vulnerable, nurturing emotions would be nearly impossible for him, especially after the slight of his wife cheating on him. Father made the decision to leave and abandon his sons, leading to a fresh cycle of hurt, vulnerability, and negative presentations of masculinity. This flashback helps provide context to both Billy and Jud’s actions throughout the book, as they’ve both been left with harmful notions of gender and without any positive male role model. While Jud has committed the most harmful act in the book by killing Kes, even his actions are afforded a certain level of sympathy, as he is presenting the same violence, aggression, and controlling behavior that Billy resorted to when he felt challenged or insulted. Both boys have been raised in an environment that treats violence as the only acceptable means of resolving conflict. 

Billy’s final vision of himself with Kes encapsulates the confident self-image he has been building throughout the book, a version of himself that is intelligent and impressive rather than oppressed and bullied: “Billy proud in the audience. Casting her off again. Ringing up. Perfectly clear. Leisurely hovering, and gaining height. Waiting on, all clear” (174-75). The imagined voice of the commentator describes a version of Billy that could exist with encouragement and opportunity. With Kes dead, however, this version of himself is now out of reach. Ultimately, his biggest barrier is not toxic masculinity, but The Difficulty of Escaping Class Oppression. With his dreams gone, he must return home and get into the bed he woke up in at the start of the book, the same bed he will likely have to wake early in to attend a shift in the pit once he’s left school like Jud. This ending scene reframes the narrative as a cycle of oppression, starting and ending in the same way it always will, full of classism, sexism, violence, and loss of innocence. The day is thus a metaphor for the pervasiveness of systems designed to foster exploitation.