Monday, May 18, 2009
Why a bird?
Reading Max's own pages he drew I became really confused at why he drew himself as a bird. On page 232, he says that "The girl says I look like something else." This answered my question temporarily, but when I looked back at the first few pages I saw that not only did he portray himself as a bird but he drew his dad, "men standing over me", and other boys he fought as birds. Is this his way of distinguishing Jews from Germans?
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I think he draws himself as a bird because Liesel whispers to Papa that Max's hair looks like feathers.
ReplyDeleteYes, i know, but I am wondering about his bird drawings of the other people too.
ReplyDeleteAs our section discussed in class, it was mainly because of the reason stated above (Ruthie's). Also, if you read Morkovine's post, you may find some other reasons.
ReplyDeleteBut really, as Ms. Wilsey said in our class, you can't read too much into this. It is after all, just a children's picture book, and you can't really tell what Max was thinking at the time. Maybe he just wanted to make Liesel smile.
I understood Ruthie's reason. In fact i stated that in my post, but it's not like Liesel said that Max's father's hair looked like feathers too.
ReplyDeleteNO PLOT of the Standover Man. I just figured that since Max drew himself as a bird, he might as well make others birds too.
ReplyDeleteI think the important part of the book is Max's story. I don't think the bird is very symbolic, so I don't think there's much to say about the birds.
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ReplyDeleteWhen Max draws the birds in the first page of the mini-book I noticed how one bird was black, which might have represented the Nazi Party because the symbol included a black eagle. The other bird which was white I thought might have represented Max
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with the fact that this not that important to be examined very carefully due to the fact that this is 13 pages of the book, which is equal to around 3 or 4 chapters. This shows friendship and kindness in a time of hatred and suffering. This is a another way for Zusak to express his characters friendships.
I think Zack is right. I think that the people in the standover man who are birds are jewish. Other than the black bird that joe refers to, i'm pretty sure that the black bird is the bird in the picture that ethan sent us a link to and it symbolizes the nazis. If max just wanted the book to be pretty and full of birds then he would've have drawn each character in his book as a bird, but he didn't.
ReplyDeleteLength does not equal importance or significance. A book can go on and on for pages and pages about absolutely nothing. In this case, the book does reveal more of the kinds of relationships Max experiences, but there is no real importance about the birds in the story.
ReplyDeleteDoes it really affect the plot if the birds are Nazi or Jewish or men or women?
It's still an interesting topic to discuss, but I just don't think it relates to the plot of TBT in a (for a lack of a better term), "big way".
The bird is supposed to represent an eagle, too because the eagle was the symbol on the Nazi military badge. (Here is a picture...http://www.warelics.com/images/1stheerparadehelmetEagle.jpg) It showed that he was afraid that the Nazi soldiers were "standing over him". Max writes that the first "standover man" was his father, who joined the army for WWI on the German side. I'm not sure why both the "men" on 226 were birds, but on most of the other pages, the Max is a bird because of his feathery hair.
ReplyDeleteI 100% agree with Ethan, and just to add a little bit, the bird in the fight with Max could be Walter Kugler (who is a Nazi, but not a fierce one), or Hitler, which would fit into the eagle emblem on the Nazi uniform.
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