The Birds

Introduction

"The Birds" is a horror story written by British writer Daphne du Maurier. The story happens in Cornwall, a small country in the UK. As the weather suddenly turned cold, thousands and thousands of birds flew into the town and attacked people. The birds were hungry and furious, and the main character Nat Hocken did everything he could do to protect his family from getting hurt by the birds. At first, they thought the weird behavior of birds was because of the weather, but they gradually realized the thing was not that easy. The story mainly talks about how Nat deals with the birds and a series of weird situations.

Feedback

When I finished this book, I actually didn't have any feelings at first because the author spent a lot of pages talking about how brutal these birds attack people, and she never gave an explanation about what made these birds so furious. However, the more I think about this story, the more I love it. In my opinion, there are some implications hidden behind this story, and they all can be interpreted differently by the readers.

The most ironic plot in the story is that Nat's boss Mr.Trigg asked Nat if he wanted to join him in shooting the birds for fun, and Nat turned him down because he thought it didn't feel safe. As expected, a few days after the birds' fierce attack, Nat came to Mr.Trigg's house asking for some supplement; he only found Mr. and Mrs. Trigg's bodies lying down on the floor with blood covering all their faces, and their eyes got peaked out. This plot made me think about the sentence "Man's determination can not conquer nature." No matter how powerful or intelligent people are, we all are the tiniest creatures when facing nature. The global warming issue has existed for a long time, and there are many people working their tails off to protect the environment. Nevertheless, there are still some people who haven't realized everything they do will affect the Earth, and they think they can fight back if anything happens, just like Mr.Trigg.

Another plot that is worth discussing is that when the birds started to hurt people, the radio(in the story it was BBC)called everybody to keep calm and stay at home. The government didn't know what caused the situation as well; however, it was still a relief for Nat's family to hear something from the outside. Unfortunately, at the end of the story, maybe it was because the attack from the birds was too harsh, the radio didn't have any sound anymore. In the whole story, the government didn't do anything to help people, or they actually did but in vain? The readers didn't know. However, from my perspective, I think it is vital to have the ability for independent thinking. If Nat listened to the radio and did nothing, the whole family would die from starving, but at the time Nat realized the government couldn't give any help, he started to observe the situation, and he began to observe when the birds would stop attacking. As a result, Nat could grab the time when those birds were relaxing to get some food. 

When I researched this book, I found that the author implied the British government during the Second World War since they also failed to protect people. "The Birds" was published in 1952, but it had so many similarities with today's society. When COVID-19 first erupted, the governments from nearly all over the world also told people don't panic and stay at home. However, many governments still did nothing but let the pandemic spread, as we can see. At that time, it was important to have the ability for independent thinking to know if the pandemic was real or conspiracy. Should we wear the mask or just take it off and pretend nothing happened?

All in all, I love "The Birds" after giving it a second thought. I think it reflects the society no matter it was 70 years ago or now. The author Daphne du Maurier used a form of horror story to talk about the sickness of this world.