Structure and narrative mode
Hawksmoor is divided into a prologue and two untitled parts of six untitled chapters each. The odd-numbered chapters are first-person narrations by Nicholas Dyer in 18th-century London, while the even-numbered chapters take place in the 1980s and are told by an omniscient narrator, from the perspective of a tour guide through London and the murder victim Thomas Hill (chapter 2), the murder victim Ned (chapter 4) and Nicholas Hawksmoor (chapters 6, 8, 10 and 12).
This clear pattern is deliberately obscured by a "pattern of echo and repetition".[7] There are numerous parallels in characters, actions and descriptions between the chapters taking place in the 18th and those taking place in the 20th century. "They escape any effort at organization and create a mental fusion between past and present."[7] For example, the same fragments of popular songs, ballads, and poems are heard in the streets of London in both historical periods.
This structure of repetitions and references underlines the peculiar theory of time the novel transports: "As we go on reading, we find more and more [...] reduplications of names, events, actions, and even identical sentences uttered by characters who live two centuries apart, until we are forced to conclude that, in the novel, nothing progresses in time, that the same events repeat themselves endlessly, and that the same people live and die only in order to be born and to live the same events again and again, eternally caught in what appears to be the ever-revolving wheel of life and death.[21] This interchangeability of characters and the circularity of events is stressed by the device of using the same words to end and to begin adjacent chapters.
Style
One of the most characteristic attributes of Hawskmoor is the first-person narration by Nicholas Dyer. Ackroyd here imitates unofficial 18th-century English (characterized by capitalization, Frenchified suffixes, irregular orthography) as can be found in Samuel Pepys's diary.
Ackroyd read 18th-century texts for half a year in the British Library.[22] "texts about how to cure the gout, by a surgeon. Necromantic texts. I didn’t mind what it was as long as it was the right period." The most important source was Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary: "Whenever I had to write a sentence about, say, someone looking out of the window, then I’d look up ‘window’ in Johnson, and there’d be all sorts of definitions, and phrases with the word in it, and these I also co-opted for the book".[23]
Symbolism
Shadow
The word "shadow" symbolizes not only Dyer's occult belief system but literally his dark side himself since he appears later on in the novel as a shadow killing people. Dyer admonishes his assistant Walter: "the art of shaddowes you must know well, Walter" because "it is only the Darknesse that can give trew Forme to our Work".[24] The name Dyer gives his occultism is "Scientia Umbrarum" (shadowy knowledge)[25] The murder victims all fall prey to an ominous figure called "the shadow".[26]
Stone
As symbol for the concept of eternity and overcome transitoriness Ackroyd chose the stone. Dyer becomes an architect after Mirabilis, his Satanic sect leader, prophesied to him: "You will build, he replied, and turn this Paper-work house (by which he meant the Meeting-place) into a Monument: let Stone be your God and you will find God in the Stone."[27]
For Dyer the monument of Stonehenge is an ancient place of occult powers, of a deep connection with a dark past because of its stones: "The true God is to be venerated in obscure and fearful Places, with Horror in their Approaches, and thus did our Ancestors worship the Daemon in the form of great Stones."[28]
The stones contain for ever the pain of the workers who erected them, Dyer can feel this and more since human concepts and suffering has eternalized in the stones: "And when I lean'd my Back against that Stone I felt in the Fabrick the Labour and Agonie of those who erected it, the power of Him who enthrall'd them, and the marks of Eternity which had been placed there."[29]
Animals
One of Satan's names, Beelzebub, can be translated as "Lord of the Flies". Thus flies and other insects (spiders, lice) are recurrently used as symbols in "Hawksmoor". Already at the very beginning of the novel Dyer advises his assistant Walter to "show how the Lines [of the church plans] necessarily beare upon one another, like the Web which the Spider spins in a Closet",[30] thus associating the churches with an insect. Dyer's pessimistic view of the world is stressed by his view of it as a "dunghill" attracting flies: "I saw the Flies on this Dunghil Earth, and then considered who their Lord might be."[31] Ironically the occultist Dyer compares the rationalistic members of the Royal Society with flies: "The Company buzzed like Flies above Ordure".[32]
Another animal often associated with Satan and evil is the black cat. Thus a black cat is often heard or seen near the places where the tramp called "The Architect" makes his appearance. It is also associated with Mirabilis and his Satanic sect ("I fell into a sound Sleep, before I did so, I seemed to hear screeching, much like that of a Catte.")[33] It is a cat which leads Thomas Hill to the church where he gets strangled.[34]
