The Painted Bird

After Marta’s hut burns down, the boy cries desperately for his parents. He seems to miss them in the second chapter, but in subsequent chapters, his memories of them are scant and vague. He begins to forget his life in the city. When they finally return, they cry and hug him; the boy, devastated to relinquish his freedom, reluctantly goes with them, feeling “smothered by their love and protection” (228). They are “frail and aging” (226), and clearly affected by the war; they live in a too-small apartment with a four-year-old orphan they’ve adopted. The relationship between the boy and his parents is awkward and tense. They don’t approve of his going out every night but appear to make no effort to stop him from doing so. They seem to not understand his behavior or to be capable of helping him recover from his trauma. Finally, they send him to live with the ski instructor on the doctor’s advice that the boy needs fresh air. Their inability to relate to the boy after their reunion reflects the difficulty of the country, and of the boy, returning from war. At the end of the book, no answer is offered as to whether their relationship will be repaired.

Gavrila is one of the Russian soldiers who takes care of the boy after the nearby village is attacked by the Kalmuks. Gavrila teaches the boy to read Russian. He also teaches him about the Communist Party and Stalin. The boy finds the inner workings of the Communist Party confusing; members are constantly watched by the rest of the Party and are turned out for the slightest offense. The boy very much wants to fit in, but he’s concerned about his origins, as the Party values those with industrial backgrounds above all others. Gavrila is central to the boy’s life for the remainder of the novel. When the boy goes to the orphanage, he continues to buy a Soviet newspaper every day. He wears a Soviet uniform despite being bullied for doing so. When his parents come to claim him, he is torn: he fears if he doesn’t go with his parents, Gavrila will not be able to find him. The boy was cared for and treated kindly by Gavrila, and he admires the army that liberated his country from the Germans. He continues to think of Gavrila and to remain connected to the Red Army in whatever way he can, long after he has left them.

Mitka is the boy’s othercaregiver at the Russian camp. A brilliant sniper, he’d been injured by a German bullet and no longer shoots. However, he is still revered by the other soldiers, especially the boy, who leans against him fondly as he tells his stories around the fire. After his friends are killed in a nearby village, Mitka brings the boy with him to avenge his friends by shooting peasants from beneath the cover of the forest. The boy knows that Mitka had to be able to live with himself, and he is honored to have been chosen to join him on his quest for justice. When the boy goes to the orphanage, he remembers Mitka’s teachings about revenge. Later, when he’s living with his parents, he drops two bricks on a cinema attendant who’d insulted him. Mitka’s philosophy, that “a man should never let himself be mistreated, for he would then lose his self-respect and his life would become meaningless” (214), is a running theme throughout The Painted Bird. The boy admires and emulates Mitka, who wages “his own private war” (206).

The SS officer decides the fate of the boy and another prisoner at a police station outside a village. When the other prisoner, already severely injured, calls him a “pig,” the officer orders his men to shoot him. The officer spares the boy’s life, expelling him from the station and into the arms of a priest. The boy is mesmerized by the officer, who with his beautiful face, sharp uniform, and authoritative carriage seems “superhuman” and infallible. The boy feels “like a squashed caterpillar” (113) in his presence. In fact, in his sexual fantasies, the boy becomes the SS officer; the powerful officer is, to the boy, the pinnacle of power, the opposite of a victim. The SS officer is also the quintessential example of the German of the boy’s imagination. Throughout the novel, he frequently wonders why the Germans are so skillful and powerful, whereas the peasants are ignorant and poor. After reluctantly leaving the station, the boy continues to ponder the origin of the Germans’ superiority.

Ewka is the daughter of Makar and the sister of “the Quail.” Nineteen years old, she has a sexual relationship with the boy while her father and brother lock themselves in the barn with the animals. The boy is happy with Ewka, who awakens in him feelings “over which I had no control” (147). When the boy discovers the family engaging in sexual activity with animals and with each other, he flees the house, convinced that selling one’s soul to the Devil is the only way to obtain strength and power. Later, he will reminisce about the tenderness of the love he gave to Ewka; the disappointment he feels when this love is betrayed triggers a descent in his perception of the world.

Lekh is a bird catcher who trades birds for food and seems to know everything about their habits and omens. Though he is fascinated by birds, he also mistreats them: he deliberately manipulates a stork’s nest, so the stork is killed by her family, and when he traps birds in his sack, he nonchalantly kills other birds who seem to protest. Lekh is in love with “stupid” Ludmila and refuses to repeat the salacious rumors about her. When she fails to meet him, he sends his painted birds to be killed by their flock. He is unable to save Ludmila from the wrath of the peasant women; the boy leaves him sobbing over her mutilated body. Lekh’s love—for birds, and for Ludmila—is complex, and tinged with anger and sorrow. This complexity, and the intermingling of beauty and sorrow, is reflected in the tragic, brutal death of the beautifully-painted bird, which represents the boy and perhaps all people.

As a girl, “stupid” Ludmila was raped by a gang of peasants; ever since, her brain has been “addled.” She is teased and tormented by the peasants, especially the women, who resent that she goes about scantily clad and waves at their husbands as they walk home from the fields. It’s said that she is sexually insatiable and that no single man can satisfy her. Living in a forest dwelling unknown to anyone, she appears to be understood only by Lekh, who listens to her talk about her past and appreciates “the byways and secret passages that her frail mind wandered through” (50). Ludmila upsets Lekh by failing to meet him, inspiring him to release his painted birds. Returning for him one day and finding him not there, she lures the boy to a field, where after attempting to force him to lie with her, she is beaten, sexually assaulted, and killed by village women. It can be argued that Ludmila’s behavior is a reaction to her tragic past and the sexual violence she experienced as a child. However, her assaulting the boy in the pasture, as well as the rumor that she engages in sexual activity with her dog, encapsulates the depravity and animal instincts the boy witnesses in each village. Later, she appears in the boy’s sexual fantasies as a generic village girl who swoons at his touch, a submissive sexual object who is the perfect complement to his dominant fantasy self.

Like the boy, the Silent One remains nameless, and mute though the difference is that the Silent One chooses not to. He is the boy’s only friend at the orphanage. They befriend each other after coming to each other’s defense against orphans who are attacking them. Together, they cause mischief in the city, attacking passersby and stealing. After the boy is beaten in the marketplace, the Silent One kills a train full of stall vendors, believing the man who beat the boy to be on it; when he discovers the man wasn’t killed, he falls to the ground in tears. Interestingly, as the two boys watch the train approaching, the Silent One is visibly nervous; he appears, like the boy, unused to causing such harm. His breakdown after discovering he’d failed to kill the boy’s attacker suggests the futility of one’s attempts to fight back.

At the German outpost, an older, bespectacled soldier is ordered to take the boy to the woods and execute him, but he simulates the boy’s death and lets him escape. One of the only acts of kindness in the novel, it inspires the boy spare to the life of a lizard in the woods and suggests goodness can exist between individuals in a society of hatred and violence.

Marta is the elderly peasant woman with whom the boy originally is sent to stay. Hobbled, withered, and decrepit, she introduces to the boy the superstitions and disdain he will encounter in each village. Specifically, she believes the boy to be a Gypsy who can cause death with his stare; she forbids him to look into her eyes and accuses him of casting spells. When she passes away, the boy accidentally sets the house on fire and flees. From there, his journey through the isolated villages begins.