678 Kosinski, Jerzy
the images that others have of us. So strongly has
the boy been shaped by the war that, when he is
reunited with his parents, he is ambivalent toward
them and unable to adapt again to the family life he
once knew.
In this regard, it’s interesting that Kosinski never
specifies the boy’s name, his home country, or his
ethnic background. Although many readers have
identified the setting as Poland, Kosinski’s home
country, and the boy as Jewish, as was Kosinski, the
book is ambiguous on these points. Much like a fairy
tale or a fable, the boy is cast into a hostile landscape,
but not one that is readily identifiable. Perhaps
Kosinski’s novel challenges us to see something of
ourselves through this device. Perhaps by trying
specifically to identify the boy and his country, we
repeat the mistakes of the villagers, that is, we risk
seeing the boy as a member of a group rather than
seeing his inner humanity.
James Wyatt
individual and Society in The Painted Bird
The Painted Bird is the story of an individual’s strug-
gle against a society that perceives him as different.
The boy, dark-haired and dark-complexioned, is
constantly threatened and abused by the villagers he
meets, who are blond and light-skinned. Because of
the boy’s appearance, the villagers fear and despise
him. Garbos worries that the boy is casting Gypsy
spells. The carpenter is afraid that the boy’s black
hair will attract lightning. Others make the sign of
the cross when they see him in order to ward off evil.
As a result of the villagers’ fears, the boy is pelted
with stones, thrown into a manure pit, whipped, and
nearly drowned.
It is this relationship between the individual
and society that is illustrated in the novel’s cen-
tral metaphor: Lekh, the bird-catcher, enraged by
Ludmila’s absence, paints bird after bird “in still
gaudier colors, and release[s] them into the air to
be killed by their kin.” The relationship between
the painted bird and its flock is a metaphor for the
way that society treats those that it perceives as
different. Just as the birds tear apart the individual
that they fail to recognize as one of their own, so
too do humans. Ludmila, whom Lekh imagines as
a “strange-colored bird,” lives apart from society
and does not obey its conventions, taking count-
less lovers. As a consequence, the women of the
village set upon her and brutally kick and beat her
to death. In much the same way, because the Nazis
perceive them as different, Jews and Gypsies are
sent to concentration camps.
In Kosinski’s novel, society demands conformity.
The boy realizes this fact and dreams of inventing
tools to change people so that they conform to the
norms. Reflecting upon the trains leading to the
death camps, the boy asks, “Wouldn’t it be easier
to change people’s eyes and hair than to build big
furnaces and then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn
in them?” Even when he is rescued by the Russian
army, the boy worries that the Soviet system will
demand a similar kind of conformity. He notes
that “Only the group, which they called ‘the collec-
tive,’ was qualified to determine a man’s worth and
importance” (192), and he therefore worries that
“just as my black hair and eyes were held against me
by the peasants, my social origin could handicap my
new life with the Soviets.”
And yet the metaphor of the painted bird also
describes the desire of the bird to return to its flock.
Even as the boy faces danger in the villages, he
needs and desires companionship. He relies upon
others for protection and for food, and he longs to
be accepted and loved. At the novel’s end, although
the boy’s experiences throughout the war have led
him to desire isolation, he still feels compelled to
return to his parents when they at last find him in
an orphanage. Upon seeing his mother and father
for the first time in many years, he realizes that he
“suddenly felt like Lekh’s painted bird, which some
unknown force was pulling to its kind.” However,
the boy soon decides he “would much prefer to be
on [his] own again, wandering from one village to
the next.”
The boy’s experiences throughout the novel lead
him to believe that life within society is impossible.
After he is thrown into the manure pit, the boy
becomes mute, a condition that seems emblematic
of his inability to communicate with others. Near
the end of the novel, the boy makes clear his feel-
ings about society: “Every one of us stood alone . . .
It mattered little if one was mute; people did not
understand one another anyway.” And yet despite