Tracey Lindberg’s novel Birdie is narratively constructed in a contorting and poetic manner yet illustrates the seriousness of violence experience by Indigenous females. The novel is about a young Cree woman Bernice Meetoos (Birdie) recalling her devasting past and visionary journey to places she has lived and the search for home and family. Lindberg captures Bernice’s internal therapeutic journey to recover from childhood traumas of incest, sexual abuse, and social dysfunctions. She also presents Bernice’s self-determination to achieve a standard of good health and well-being. The narrative presents Bernice for the most part lying in bed and reflecting on her dark life in the form of dreams.
A significant motif of The Painted Bird is the comparison between the primitive aspects that the boy experiences in the countryside that contrast his upbringing in civilization. The child’s strongest memory of his past life is his “appendix operation when [he] was only four years old” (Kosinski 10). There he had access to modern medicine and recalls “the glossy hospital floors, the gas mask doctors placed on my face” (Kosinski 10). This directly contrasts with his experiences in village life. During his time with the village healer, Olga, the boy witnesses the many rituals she uses to heal people.
The old lady told her, “ ‘Little Bird, in the world to come, you will not be asked “Why were you not George?’ or ‘Why were you not Perkin’ but ‘Why were you not Catherine?’ ” (Cushman 17). Catherine didn’t fully understand what it meant at first, but the old woman’s words helped her later when it really mattered. When Shaggy Beard’s messengers came, Catherine ran to her Aunt Ethelfritha’s house in fear and desperation.
This statement implies that those who lived in the neighborhood knew Catherine because they called her by her nickname. After being stabbed Kitty called
Introduction: Change leads to both positive and negative situations, however concludes in transformation. Whether negative or positive, change will alter aspects, and transform lives. The use of literature enables individuals to accept that change results in growth. Change can have three main perspectives: changing self, changing worlds and changing perspectives. These perspectives are all represented in the novel, Catherine, Called Birdy, written by Karen Cushman, and are also presented in the short story Sky High, written by Hannah Roberts.
Birdie is not an easy read, an unexpected fact, considering the woman who penned it, Tracey Lindberg, is a lawyer and professor by trade. The difficulty in reading the novel comes not only from its harrowing subject matter but also from the way the story is told. It’s non-linear and jumps back and forth from the present to the past. At the start of each chapter are poems, which often transform characters into animals, such as Bernice Meetos/Birdie who longs to return to the tree, Pimatisewin. The story doesn’t entirely belong to Bernice however, as the chapters tell the story of Beatrice from the voice of five different women- her cousin, aunt, mother, landlord and herself.
Flannery O’Connor’s The King of the Birds is a narrative explaining the narrator’s obsession with different kinds of fowl over time. The reader follows the narrator from her first experience with a chicken, which caught the attention of reporters due to its ability to walk both backward and forward, to her collection of peahens and peacocks. At the mere age of five, the narrator’s chicken was featured in the news and from that moment she began to build her family of fowl. The expansive collection began with chickens, but soon the narrator found a breed of bird that was even more intriguing; peacocks.
Catherine relates to her birds as she keeps her birds in cages and she feels as if she is being trapped in her position as a noble women who is to be married off and do the duties a women should do. The contrast in her perspective at the end of the novel, which is when
Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening opens with a scene of two birds, emphasizing that the motif of birds later within the novel will play an important part with setting the constant metaphor they bring. Throughout the whole novel the motif of birds is a metaphor for the Victorian women during that period -- caged birds serve as reminders of Edna’s entrapment and the entrapment of Victorian women in general. Edna makes many attempts to escape her cage (husband, children, and society), but her efforts only take her into other cages, such as the pigeon house. Edna views this new home as a sign of her independence, but the pigeon house represents her inability to remove herself from her former life, due to the move being just “two steps away” (122).
How is Catherine unique? In the book, Rules by Cynthia Lord, Catherine was the main character who faced many challenges throughout the book. She has a mom who does not really understand her problems. Her dad does not really play a big role in the story. These challenges often include his little brother, David, messing up things.
“A bird in the house . . . had swung itself up to the secret sanctuaries” and looked upon the garden silently. Margaret Laurence introduces this bird as an intruder, disrupting the “secret sanctuaries.” of the family. A bird in the house is a message of death to come, and here it sits upon the roof of their house, out of reach for the spruce’s giant wings.
In the novel Longitude written by Dava Sobel and published by Walker, recaps the story of the true story of navigation history changing. This Popular Science novel draws attention to readers who take pleasure in historic events and scientific discoveries, much like many other works of Sobel. Dava Sobel was famous for her popular exhibitions of scientific topics, such as Longitude. In the last 14th century, the great lack of longitude calculations was a drastic battle for captains and their crew, and Britain was vulnerable to anyone to fix the problem. Clockmaker John Harrison seeks to triumph the contest of best clock in order to claim the prize.
In addition to her irritability, her sleeping and eating habits alter throughout the novel. In Chapter 10, Nelly describes Cathy waking her in the middle of the night because she needs a companion to stay awake with her (Bronte). She has racing thoughts that often keep her up late at night. Nelly illustrates that Cathy’s eating habits have altered when she says that Catherine has been “scarcely eating anything” and “...she could neither eat nor drink…” (Bronte 139 and
In the two poems Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Caged Bird by Maya Angelou, gave a comparison between the life of a caged bird and the life of a slave. There are similarities and differences in the two poems. The difference between the two poem is that Sympathy is more aggressive than the poem Caged Bird, and the similarities of the two poems is the theme and imagery. The poem Sympathy the poem
“Caged Bird” written by Maya Angelou in 1968 announces to the world her frustration of racial inequality and the longing for freedom. She seeks to create sentiment in the reader toward the caged bird plight, and draw compassion for the imprisoned creature. (Davis) Angelou was born as “Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St Louis, Missouri”. “Caged Bird” was first published in the collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? 1983.
