How is the bird imagery interpreted in "The Girl Who Fell from the Sky"?
Birds are found throughout the text of The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, written by Heidi W. Durrow in 2010. The author makes use of bird imagery and metaphors to describe the juxtaposition and travel between different worlds that the protagonist Rachel finds herself in. Birds often symbolize freedom...
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and escape; they can fly away at any moment. Birds in many ways symbolize the hopes and dreams of the young protagonist Rachel.
Where birds can fly, Rachel finds herself stuck between two worlds. But she finds hope in the travel between spaces. Rachel is the only survivor in a tragic accident at the age of eleven where her mother and two siblings fell from the top of their Chicago apartment. Rachel is in some ways the bird that escapes her own death. Jamie, a neighbor, sees the family falling from his window and mistakes them for birds at first.
“This, of course, is precisely what Durrow has done in this powerful book: taken sadness and turned it into a beautiful song.” (McAlpin 2010)
Rachel is bi-racial. She lives between whiteness and blackness. The story is dealing with complex issues of identity and grief. Birds provide a metaphor of hope and escape in the face of trauma and sadness.
Durrow, H.W. (2010). The girl who fell from the sky: A novel. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
McAlpin, H. (2010, February 19). The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. Retrieved January 22, 2016 from http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2010/0219/The-Girl-Who-Fell-From-The-Sky
How is bird imagery used in The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, and what might its prevalence throughout the book signify?
To begin a discussion on this topic, we first have to realize that birds can travel wherever they will at any moment due to use of their wings. Rachel travels, too: to Chicago, to Oregon, to many places where she learns race has great meaning. Through her travels, though, bird imagery takes on a more important symbolism: the symbolism of dreams.
The imagery is prevalent precisely because birds can escape and be free of anything that ails them: they can fly away at any moment. In all of the hardships Rachel faces, she often wishes for these very qualities. Birds, then, end up symbolizing Rachel's dreams and hopes. Rachel dreams and hopes she can find a way to fit in. Rachel dreams and hopes she won't be weighed down by sadness at the loss of her family. Rachel dreams and hopes she can find a true friend and a true love. Even though this quotation doesn't mention birds precisely, it is full of bird imagery:
Grandma sees these things when she talks about them and gestures with her hands like she's painting brush strokes in the air. The way Grandma paints her dreams for me, there's a low sky.
Why is the "low sky" here important for Rachel? Because, as a bird, Rachel feels like she can "reach" and/or "fly into" the "low sky" that her grandmother paints. Here Rachel feels like her hopes and dreams are attainable.
In conclusion, even the reference to Rachel's mother's and sibling's deaths can apply to the symbolism of birds as hopes and dreams. When Rachel's mother and siblings fall, they look like birds at first. Here it looks as though Rachel's hopes and dreams have died. Ironically, Rachel is the bird that has escaped death and can, eventually, pursue her own dreams to "fly."