The Birds and Other Stories Literary Elements

Short Story; gothic novelette

The Birds is set in Cornwall, in a small town similar to Fowey, where the author lived, shortly after the end of World War Two.

Thee point of view is that of Nat Hocken, a wounded veteran of World War Two, recently returned to his family home.

Frightening and foreboding

Ned is the protagonist, while the birds are the antagonists.

The major conflict is between the people and the birds, specifically in Nat's neighborhood, but it is mentioned that these avian attacks are happening all over the country.

Nat discovers the bodies of his boss and his neighbors, and realizes that the birds will continue to attack until they have killed everyone, himself included.

The gathering of the gulls on the ocean as they wait for high tide foreshadows the attack that follows that evening.

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The author alludes to BBC Radio News; during World War Two the majority of the population learned about the war and the allied armies' progress "over the wireless" and du Maurier alludes to this by including the news broadcasts in the story, as they report on the attacks by the birds in the same way that they reported on attacks by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz.

The imagery is dark and threatening and although colors are never mentioned at all the images created for the reader give the impression of a very gray landscape punctuated by large black gulls and other birds. The image created of the attacking birds is one of an attacking army and the similes that the author uses, for example describing the sound of the birds to be like the sound of a plane creates a very wartime image for her readers.

Mr Trigg does not take the threat of the birds entirely seriously because he believes he will be able to shoot them, but he is one of the first of their victims.

There is a parallel between the threat posed from the air by the birds to the residents of Cornwall and the threat that was posed from the air by the German air force during World War Two.

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