The Birds

“On December the third the wind changed overnight and it was winter. Until then the autumn had been mellow, soft. The leaves had lingered on the trees, golden red, and the hedgerows were still green. The earth was rich where the plow had turned it.”

The narrator opens with a statement about an unusual weather phenomenon, closely followed by a description of what the weather was like before the wind changed. The passage foreshadows the role the wind will take in the story, and the description of the pleasant autumn scene provides contrast with the winter to come and creates a sense of foreboding.

“Crying, whistling, calling, they skimmed the placid sea and left the shore. Make haste, make speed, hurry and begone: yet where, and to what purpose? The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry; they must spill themselves of motion before winter came.”

The sentences’ diction and rhythm imitate, in the form of language, the restless birds’ directionless flight. The narrator’s diction soars and stops, soars and stops, creating a rhythm that builds quickly to a crescendo, repeatedly.

“‘Did you hear that?’ he said. ‘They went for me. Tried to peck my eyes.’”

For the first time, Nat experiences a popular attack strategy of the birds: Get the human’s eyes to make him more vulnerable to further violence. The birds are treating the eyes as they do the windows, as their first targets.