Causality

The transformation of the brother into a bird and back into a boy is important to the story of The Juniper Tree, but leaves a lot of questions. Where does he fall on a scale between totally human and totally animal? What about his song? And how can he come back from the dead? How does this transformation compare to others we've read about?

The boy's transformation into a bird in the visual medium of a film spoke to me more as a symbolic gesture than in the story. Odd, though, that when I saw the actual transformation, I was less inclined to believe it. As has been said in the earlier posts, I believe that the boy is in some sort of purgatory. This can't be the type of place we normally consider purgatory, though. The boy is not a causal agent of his own demise. Granted, he does not accept the new Stepmother as his family, but it can be argued (more so in the story than the film) that she is evil and the events could only occur one way. This place the boy is in, a metaphysical place, is mostly devoid of repentance. The way he is "rescued" back to life is by no account of his own. Neither the story nor the film ventures into his narrative territory. For all we know, he is fighting monsters and clawing his way back to the land of the living. Anyway, that just means that his resurrection has to be strictly symbolic. The bond of family over all else? Rid the world of some evil, receive some good? In the film, i'd say that the main focus is on narrative continuity--the boy has to be ok. In the story, the boy's resurrection is an afterthought. The heavyness of his departure is inherent in his song. He torments from beyond the living realm. As for this relating to other tales, his transformation back is pretty standard stuff. I like his character better as a bird, but maybe thats just me.