The Death Axis

To ask where the boy's identity lies between beast and animal is attribute his identity to an X,Y axis. Along the bottom of the graph we chart his progress towards the human and from top to bottom measure's his existence as an animal, or in the case of Juniper Tree specifically his "birdliness." But I think this charting, though certainly academically fruitful, benefits even further from the third axis; in what sense is our boy alive, and in what since is he dead, and how does that play into the animal vs. human debate. This evocation of the "death axis" provides another dissimilarity between this story and those of the "brothers transformed into birds" story type. In the Juniper Tree the subject of transformation dies before corporeal transference. His conversion from bones to bird acts as a resurrection, and it might be argued that boy's bird identity is actually just an avatar, or a vengeful spirit. Only in loose terms is he actually a bird, since he seems to maintain all of the conscious operations he could have performed as a human. In his bird form, he is still deceased, his repeated song like a stubborn memory. When he finally returns to his boy form at the end, the question has never been answered as to what has granted him life. The transference of matter is somehow more plausible than the recreation of matter, even in the context of the mystical fairy tale. It may also be significant that the bird form was considered a link between earhtly and heavenly bodies, since that is actually what this boy has become. Somewhere along the "Death axis" between the living and the deceased.