The Painted Bird 679this pessimistic view of society’s relationship to the
individual, the book does end on a small note of
optimism. The boy, living in the mountains apart
from his parents, answers a ringing telephone and
feels that “somewhere at the other end of the wire
there was someone who wanted to talk with me . . .
I felt an overpowering desire to speak.” Although
the boy has clearly been altered by his experiences
during the war, perhaps we can find hope in the
fact that he regains his voice, hope that the boy may
yet be able to communicate with and participate in
society.
James Wyatt
violence in The Painted Bird
Even the most jaded reader of The Painted Bird
must be shocked by some of the novel’s depictions
of violence. The images are gruesome: Garbos tor-
tures the boy by suspending him just above the jaws
of a vicious dog; the miller blinds a rival by pluck-
ing out his eyes with a spoon; the Kalmuks (Soviet
deserters who fought with the Germans) rape the
women and children of a village. That a young
boy, alone and unprotected, is witness to—or often
subjected to—such violence makes these depic-
tions even more shocking. Some readers may feel
that the novel’s violence is overstated, perhaps even
obscene, so perhaps we should consider the prob-
lem Kosinski faced in writing about World War II:
How does one begin to convey the magnitude of
the Holocaust?
Surprisingly, the violence that the novel depicts
is generally not that of concentration camps and of
the occupying German army. In fact, the boy is met
with relative kindness by one of the German sol-
diers, who, when ordered to kill the boy, instead sets
him free. Although we are made aware of the trains
carrying Jews and Gypsies to the camps, the violence
we witness is largely associated with the villagers
that the boy encounters. Those whom we might
expect to shelter the boy instead despise and vio-
lently abuse him. The pattern is set early in the novel
when the boy, seeking help, enters a new village: He
is kicked by one peasant and whipped by another. In
response, the crowd “howl[s] with laughter.” In each
new episode of the novel, the boy encounters new
forms of abuse and violence.
The novel therefore describes not simply the vio-
lence of war, but also the violence of human nature.
Kosinski presents us with a world in which people
are intrinsically harsh, cruel, and animalistic. In fact,
we are often shown that there is little or no differ-
ence between human and animal behavior. Garbos,
who wants to kill the boy, is closely linked to his dog
Judas, who attacks the boy. The murder of Ludmila
by the village women reminds us of how Lekh’s
painted bird is torn to pieces by the flock.
In such a world, where individuals are despised
for being different and where only the strong can
survive, the boy necessarily learns to be violent. To
save his own life, he is forced to kill, escaping from
the carpenter by pulling him into a bunker filled
with rats. From Mitka, the Russian sniper, the boy
learns a philosophy of revenge when several sol-
diers from Mitka’s regiment are killed at a party by
drunken peasants. Mitka in response takes up his
sniper rifle and kills a number of the villagers: “Only
the conviction that one was as strong as the enemy
and that one could pay him back double, enabled
him to survive, Mitka said. . . . If someone slapped
you and it felt like a thousand blows, take revenge
for a thousand blows.” The boy and the Silent One
seem to follow this philosophy when they plot
the murder of a farmer who beat the boy. In their
attempt to kill the farmer, they derail a passenger
train, killing perhaps hundreds of others. At the
novel’s end, when the boy is at last reunited with his
family, his parents are shocked by his violent behav-
ior. They look at him with wordless incomprehen-
sion after he breaks the arm of his adopted brother.
The novel is in this way a strange coming of
age story: The boy matures and loses his innocence;
however, his experiences during the six years of the
war leave him violent and vengeful. Likewise, the
other children in the orphanage, who have also lived
through the horrors of war, have been badly dam-
aged by their experiences. Violence, it seems, begets
violence. A boy nicknamed Cannon kills a girl by
throwing a heavy boot at her. Other boys gang-rape
a nurse.
The Painted Bird suggests to us that violence is
a tool we use to gain power over others. Before the
boy and the Silent One derail the passenger train,
the boy considers the power at his disposal. He