What Daphne du Maurier does in “The Birds” was not new. H. G. Wells was her mentor, I believe, for he wrote several stories about animals that are monsters, from the killer squids in “The Sea Raiders”, to bats in “In the Avu Observatory” to ants in “Empire of the Ants”. He even managed it with humans in “The Country of the Blind”. The lesson that Du Maurier learned from Wells was ordinary creatures, usually loveable and agreeable, can become monstrous once they deviate from their expected behaviors. These deviations are logical in that the birds are still flying animals in most respects. (They do team-up with other birds that are usually predators they avoid.) They do not talk or other impossible actions that would drive the story into pure fantasy. They just wake up one day and want to kill us. Bad.
Now, first off, I want to caution the reader about thinking of Alfred Hitchcock’s film. It is a masterpiece in its own right, but I’m dealing exclusively with the original story, “The Birds” (The Apple Tree, 1952). The film version was adapted by Evan Hunter (of Ed McBain fame) but very little was used except for the title and the basic idea. The characters played by Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and Tippi Hedren are all Mr. Hunter’s.
The original story follows an English family from the beginning of the terror and fades to black on a bleakly unfinished note, as the father smokes his symbolic last cigarette. Birds of all kinds are attacking humans during the night as an unnaturally cold wind blows from the east. “…The restless urge of autumn, unsatisfying, sad, had put a spell upon them and they must flock, and wheel, and cry…” There is some connection between the wind and the attacks but no one survives long enough to figure out what it is. The father and his wife grasp at possibilities but in the end no one knows why this is all happening. He simply knows every day he will have to venture out of the barricaded house to look for supplies and survivors. How long can it last?
Many of Du Maurier’s descriptions of the attacking or waiting birds sound military, images of a World War not yet forgotten in 1952. The spinning swarms in the sky look like airplanes, the waiting flocks on the sea resemble navies. The family gathers around the radio, hoping for good news but there is none. They must fall back on their own resources, boarding up windows, stuffing chimneys and waiting out the nightly attacks of hawks, gulls, warblers and crows. The images Du Maurier creates of the boarded-up windows with the small group trying to survive against a tide of destructive evil has become the stock property of a million zombie movies but in her day it was startling and original. Her birds are single-minded, with killing the humans their only objective, even to the point of killing themselves in the process. No matter the size of the bird. Even the smallest wrens with their “… little stabbing beaks sharp as a pointed fork” are fearsome for they can poke an eye or break the skin. Their small size allows them to creep in where a larger bird can not. The amusing intelligence of a crow becomes wicked and dangerous once that singular mind is turned towards killing you. Individually, the father is a match for any bird, even an eagle, but collectively, the humans are outmatched.
So, to recap:
– Du Maurier makes her natural creatures behave in unnatural ways but in logical ones that go with their abilities.
– Du Maurier shows their malicious intention to kill humans
– She gives no explanation as to why it has happened (deepening the mystery)
– She offers no solution at the end but leaves us feeling uneasy
Other authors who came before and after Du Maurier include Arthur Machen in “The Terror” (in which the angst of WWI infects the animals with a killing lust) and Philip Macdonald in “Our Feathered Friends” (where a flock of birds at the beach go ballistic) and a whole host of bad 1970s and 80s horror films based on Wellsian killer animals. The theme is repeated over and over: Nature is powerful and we will survive only as long as it wants us to.
