Hawk - “Our Street”
Thackeray affirms: “in a word, I know that you, you hawk-beaked, keen-eyed, sleepless, indefatigable old Mrs. Cammysole, have read all my papers for these fifteen years.” The metaphoric ‘hawk-beak’ exemplifies Mrs. Cammysole’s inborn intrusive instinct that cannot be smoothly forfended. Her resolve is as hard-hitting as a hawk mincing its hapless prey unremittingly until it is dilapidated.
Braggadocio - “On Being Found Out”
According to Thackeray: “That certainty of being found out must haunt and depress many a bold braggadocio spirit. Let us say it is a clergyman, who can pump copious floods of tears out of his own eyes and those of his audience. He thinks to himself, "I am but a poor swindling, chattering rogue. My bills are unpaid. I have jilted several women whom I have promised to marry. I don't know whether I believe what I preach, and I know I have stolen the very sermon over which I have been sniveling. Have they found me out?" says he, as his head drops down on the cushion.” The allegorical ‘braggadocio spirit’ personifies the egotism which inevitably perishes when a two-faced party is alert that his/ her mendacities have been unknotted. “Being found out” noticeably outdoes seeming effects by distressing an individual’s accustomed pose.
