Thursday, February 11, 2010
Boy as bird
In The Juniper Tree, the boy is turned into a bird after he is dead and his body is devoured. This, in itself is different from other stories we have read when the boys have been alive when they were turned into birds. I believe that this means that the boy in The Juniper Tree cannot be transformed back into a human, since his human body is nonexistent except for the remains that were buried. In other words, what I have gathered from this is that his spirit is in the bird because that was all that was left to be transformed. If he were to turn back into a human spirit, he would be some angel or ghost. The boys in other stories were transformed by some spell, so the bird is their body, just in a different form. So, does that make him more of a bird or a boy? I believe that this puts him somewhere in between. I believe that he is more bird than the boys in the other stories, who are still boys, but in a different form. Yet, we hear his song, and he still knows exactly what happened to him even after he died. Then, he was able to receive gifts as a bird, and he knew exactly what to do with each gift. This shows that he is still there. I think he is merely a spirit occupying the bird. Therefore, he is somewhere in between. Yet, since the spirit controls the body, he is still more of a boy than a bird. Either way, the reader can understand that this transformation is different. It is closer to resurrection than pure transformation as in other cases.
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It's interesting that you distinguish between a retransformation and a resurrection, the latter being apparently impossible because the boy's body has already been devoured. The way the story (or our translation, at least) is worded makes me think that the Grimms would've agreed with you. After the millstone is dropped, it says the father and Marlene heard the sound and saw smoke, flames, and fire rising "from the spot"--now, maybe this is a misreading, but it seems like that means the fire was coming from where the wife was crushed. The fact that the boy returns from this spot, with no indication at all that the bird changed into the boy, indicate that this is an entirely new body we're talking about.
ReplyDeleteWhat that means for the story as a whole, I have no idea. Perhaps the idea is that a life that is truly gone (in the sense that the body has been destroyed) cannot return from simple material efforts such as burying the bones; a new life requires an existing life to be extinguished--in this case, the wife's.
I hadn't thought about the fact that his body had been devoured before the transformation took place in the story. This does raise an interesting argument for the amount of bird he truly is. i would disagree that he is more bird than the boys in the other stories though. He almost completely retains his consciousness as a human while he is a bird. The other boys in the other stories always act more birdish than the one in the Juniper Tree. They also always tend to demonstrate this immediately by flying off right after the transformation. This is a rather arbitrary and animalistic action. The boy in the Juniper Tree immediately begins searching for the tools of his revenge. I believe this is where the key difference is.
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