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The Birds By Daphne Du Maurier

Decent Essays

Survival. As a famous saying goes, “Sometimes even to live can be an act of courage.” Survival is not something most Americans think of first thing in the morning. For some humans in the world, surviving is the most difficult task to complete in their daily life; one reason being poverty. For Nat Hocken, it isn’t poverty that made it difficult for him to survive; it is birds. Birds are known to have a predominantly positive connotation such as innocence, beauty, gentleness, nobility, and good omen. In the story “The Birds,” the author Daphne Du Maurier creates birds that are evil, violent, ferocious, and savage creatures that are apparently hungry for humans. Nat, living on a small farm, being physically disabled has to survive on his …show more content…

Nat also had come to recognize the fact that if the government did try to help, it wouldn’t be any use for them. The government would first help its major population in the cities; not the ones that live in some small rural farm. As a final point, Nat was a critical thinker. Maurier says, “he decided they must sleep in the kitchen… keep up the fire…bring down their mattresses.” He had everything planned beforehand and was always planning his next step. Nat even calculated the times when it was the most dangerous times to go out and when it wasn’t. His wisdom was the reason his family survived for such a long period of time.
Secondly, Nat was a very observant man. Maurier says that "every day at work Nat at midday would pause his work and watch the birds" (Maurier 51). An average person could have an hour-long conversation with a friend in the coffee shop, but 5 minutes later can’t remember what shirt they were wearing. This isn’t a memory problem; it’s the same reason a person forgets why they just walked into the kitchen. Humans have been accustomed to not notice such trivial things. Nat was different because he would notice these small things. Maurier said, “Jim’s body laid in the yard… cows trampled on…door…shut and bolted…close to telephone” (Maurier 79) Here in front of Nat lays a dead body that has been trampled on by cows, but he is able to pick out little details like the door being tightly

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