Obviously the boy in The Juniper Tree does not fall at the extremes of totally human or animal and consequently he lies somewhere in between, but "in between" is a large place. As far as this particular story is concerned I believe he falls much closer to the totally human side of the plane. Not only does he begin his life as human but after he dies and is transformed into a bird he goes about the task - whether knowingly or not - of trying to become human again. If he were more bird than human I think it would be safe to say he would have remained in the form at the conclusion of the story.
To me, the bird embodies the guilt of the mother (though she did not appear overly broken up over the murder of her step-son initially). The song serves as the record of her misdeed and consequently she is tormented by it.
This particular transformation is interesting to me because unlike many fairy tales the transformation occurs so that the boy can apparently seek revenge on his stepmother. He is given a second chance at life to punish his stepmother and then he is rewarded with the completion of his transformation cycle. Also, the transformation in a lot of other stories is less literal, such as in Donkeyskin where the girl remains a girl the entire story but her status in the kingdoms changes.
As to the reasoning behind the boy's resurrection, well, why not? I've never known a fairy tale to be bound by the laws of physics and nature that regulate our own world, so if a boy wants to come back to to life as a bird and murder his grandmother, so be it.
Sorry if this is short or not particularly insightful, I just got my splint off today and my hand is still really stiff. And though the nerve damage in my hand is not permanent, it will take about 18 months for me to regain full mobility and feeling in it, so typing is still a little tough.
Also, has anybody seen that movie The Crow with Brandon Lee (Bruce Lee's son)? Similar idea, check it out.
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I like the idea that the boy falls somewhere between totally human and totally animal. Before I saw the movie, I thought that the boy was completely boy before the transformation, but when he is a bird, he keeps some human rational and falls in this middle state.
ReplyDeleteHowever, after watching the movie and seeing how vicious the boy was toward his relatively benign step-mother, I wonder if the director/actor was trying to apply this idea of constantly part-boy, part-bird. I understand being a little bit upset about having a new mom, but he was just horrible.
I completely disagree with everything you have said Jimmy Jon. The only thing you were right about was that it was "short and not particularly insightful." Besides that, your entire post was merely a few poorly constructed paragraphs that I had to trudge my way through in order to find anything somewhat meaningful...
ReplyDeleteFor those that do not know, Jimmy Jon and I are roommates and I am only serious about half of those statements.
Anyway, when I was reading your post I began to wonder how much we can/should associate anything that happens in the stories we read this semester to the fact that it is from a fairy tale. It seems that most of the questions that were asked for this week's blog post could be simply answered "...because it's a fairy tale." Perhaps it will be better discovered with the more stories we read this semester, but how much leeway can we give to the "...because it's a fairy tale" defense? I would imagine that the reason why we enjoy fairy tales is that there is some sense of reality, no matter how small.