Death by/of Evil

The brother's time as a bird in The Juniper Tree marks a stark contrast to transformations and the role of the birds in other stories. In the similar tale of Hansel and Gretel, for instance, the bird serves as an otherworldly guide that not only directly helps the children (get across the lake), but also indirectly helps the children (eats the bread that represents gluttony and stupidity to help them become the intellectual individuals they need to be). In such a way, birds seem to possess knowledge and purpose of another dimension that mortal humans cannot fully understand. Furthermore, the white birds traditionally symbolize "superior benevolent powers" of Christian times (Tatar 277). In many fairy tales, even when a human is transformed into a bird, he still cannot speak in his bird form nor fully fathom what happened when he returns to his proper state. However, in this tale, the boy is not a supreme being in his bird form, but rather an anthropomorphic figure. He becomes a bird who cannot only speak but also can remember exactly what happened in his human state, and can express it in his new form by singing in a language humans can process. He can only return to his proper form when evil is conquered through death, just as he could only transform into a bird when he was killed by evil. Death by evil or the death of evil are the triggers of the transformation, and because the witch in the movie The Juniper Tree does not die, the bird cannot return to his boy state.