Fairy Tales 2010

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Brother Bird Transformation

Perhaps the point of fairytale stories, and part of their intrigue, is that one can never be completely certain about definitions. Yes the morals are strategic and outlined fairly clearly but the characters are meant to be ambiguous, particularly the men. The brother who is turned into a bird is, I believe, still mostly human since he is able to transform back, he just has a spiritual and physical for a time connection with the heavens and the supernatural realm. So he is not entirely animal but his animal form gives him a connection with the fantastical realm of fairytales while he retains his human sensibilities as displayed by his song. Although the brother sings, “tweet tweet! What a lovely bird I am!” I think it is meant as a kind of joke because of the tragedy and horrible circumstances he describes in the previous lines of the song about how his mother killed him and his father eating him.

The brother can come back from the dead because he is a brother, a virtuous figure who can overcome the horrible things the evil woman in the story does to him. If male virtue and strength cannot overcome the evil nature of the woman it overthrows the hegemonic traditions and the moral of the story. This transformation is different because when he returns he is able to physically crush his captor, the woman who put the spell on him, with the millstone and transforms himself rather than his sister completing the process for him.

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