What a barbaric world we live in… throughout history this is
repeated often and yet our civilization is supposedly getting more socially
responsible and active to stop behaviors that destroy others in the world. Nothing was more brutal and realistic than Jerzy
Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, set in
the time of World War II in Europe.
While the author has provided a brilliantly written story, it is one
that is really hard to visualize and comprehend. The story is of a young Jewish boy who is
given away by his parents in the hopes they can escape the Nazis and allow
their son a chance to escape the killings.
The young boy is left with a woman who dies rather soon after his
parents depart, leaving the young boy to live as a gypsy roaming the Eastern
part of Europe attempting to live through the chaos of a country torn apart by
hatred and destruction. I had often
wondered what this book was about as it appears in the New York Times Best 100
Novels of the Twentieth Century. I, for
one, echo their accolades and say add this one to your list. While difficult reading, after you read it
you will wonder how this world can sustain itself, where is the love, the hope
for humanity? We are nothing more than
animals, eating upon each other much like the description of the “painted bird”
which tries to mingle with its family of birds, but is ostracized and
eventually killed based on being different, in this case because the bird
catcher decided to paint it. We are
afraid of “the other,” never taking a moment to understand and realize at our
core, we are no different on the inside, though our colors may be
different. Kosinski’s protagonist, the
young boy, runs from village to village, and faces savage beatings, almost
being raped by a gang of boys, witnessing rape and bestiality, and being thrown
into a pit of manure where he becomes deaf due to the injuries. The young boy’s experience mirrors that of
the animals that surround him on his travels, where some animals prey on
others, and illustrates that all living things on this earth have one goal, to
survive over others. Surprised a bit by
the ending of the story, as did not think it needed to end as potentially
positive as it did, though it does end as World War II comes to a conclusion. I appreciated the postscript at the conclusion
of the story explaining Kosinski’s reason for the book and some of the
challenges he faced in his country after the book was published (and banned
from the book shelves and classrooms).
Kosinski escaped to the US and lived in NYC. I wish I could be more optimistic as the
book’s closing about life, but with so much war, brutal murder, and the
destruction of others for sex, money, and power, it is a hard to have
hope. Dialogue and understanding need a
renaissance in our world today, we all need to play a role in this work.
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