Images of the Bird

An image that is presented over and over throughout Irena’s story is that of a bird. She uses one of these innocent creatures to describe the terrible scene of a German officer shooting a baby. She also uses them to represent feelings of fear and entrapment. Ultimately, however, the bird represents freedom.

When Irena begins her book, she tells the story of a bird that flies up from a field and is shot by a hunter. It is learned later in the book that this imagery actually represents a Jewish baby being thrown up in the air by a German officer at a concentration camp, and then shot. This haunting image appears throughout the book as Irena believed when she saw the shooting of the baby that she’d witnessed the most cruel thing a person could do to another. After the war was...