Transformation in the Juniper Tree

The premise of The Juniper Tree is, to put it bluntly, bizarre. In the tale, we find a wicked stepmother who devises a twisted, perverse scheme to kill her stepchild: first, she chops his head off, Guillotine-style, and then stirs his dismembered body parts into a stew, which she proceeds to serve to the unsuspecting family at suppertime. It’s like a bad family drama with a little Silence of the Lambs mixed in.

One of the most intriguing developments in the tale involves the reincarnation of the dead stepchild into an exquisite, mystical bird. Birds emerge as common tenants of classic folklore—time and time again, sons are transformed into ravens or swans or black crows. In this sense, then, the boy’s magical rebirth into a bird is nothing surprising. What is surprising, however, is that the boy seems to retain a good deal of agency in his bird form. Unlike other fairy tale transformations—in which the victim of transformation becomes passive, exiled to some unspecified, enchanted imprisonment where he or she is utterly powerless to change their condition—the boy in The Juniper Tree evolves into something of a hybrid bird species, a powerful juxtaposition of his human and bird beings.

Consider The Seven Ravens. In this tale, a father’s curse transforms his seven sons into ravens, and the birds are banished to confinement in a mountain. The sons do regain their human forms eventually, but only because their sister intervenes on their behalf. Let’s contrast this scenario to The Juniper Tree. Rather than passively waiting to be saved, the boy in this story mobilizes into action and sheds his bird persona strictly through his own craft and wit. In a cleverly designed scheme, the bird-boy charms several merchants with his beautiful song into donating certain valuables to him. He then travels back to his former home and drops one of his gifts, a millstone, on the malicious stepmother’s head, crushing her to death. In this way, we see the bird of the Juniper Tree as an autonomous creature, capable of employing intelligence to exact revenge and resume human form.