He is able to come back from the dead when he sings the song and kills his stepmother. When he does this he is transformed back from bird to boy. However, none of that would be possible if his sister had not saved his bones and brought them to the Juniper Tree. The Juniper Tree is the real source of magic in the story. At first it allows the father's first wife to have the boy and then when the sister brings the boys bones to it, the tree turns the bones into the bird that then becomes the boy after the stepmother is killed.
This transformation is different from others we read about this week because an outside force is causing the boy to change forms. In the other stories the characters seemed to change form at will and didn't need any outside magic to help them. In the Juniper Tree the tree's magic is what transforms the boy into a bird and then back into a boy.
I understand why you consider the boy to be more human than bird, but I also wonder why the boy was ever turned into a bird in the first place if hes mostly human. In alot of stories Ive heard, there's usually a trade off for someone to come back to life and I believe theres more meaning to him coming back as a bird than just to sing a song.
ReplyDeleteI tend to view his reincarnation as a bird as more symbolic than anything else. His actions and motivations as a bird remain very human, especially since he is the "hero" of the story. Most magical beasts in fairy tales serve the hero in one way or another - which, in a sense, is how the reincarnation serves the son. He is reincarnated in order to be able to exact his revenge. Therefore the transformation into a bird serves two purposes: not only does the bird "serve" the hero, but also the bird is symbolic of the "magical" reincarnation of the son at the end of the story.
ReplyDelete