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The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski -
It is interesting to read a book that talks about the Second World War but is not directly talking about the atrocities of the Nazifascism. In fact, the book depicts the peasants around the main character as the perpetrators of abominable acts.
Through the eyes of this little boy who roams from village to village, the "armies" are actually the least threatening agents in his life (a German soldier spares his life, and he makes friends with Russian intellectual soldiers in the end). The villagers who discriminate him because of his dark complection are by far much more cruel.
Very powerful is the image of the "painted bird" where a man, for fun, paints a bird just to watch others of the same species slowly kill it, because they sense it is like them, but... somehow not part of their "group", just like the boy.
Entered on: Monday, November 22nd, 2004 at 14:19.
