The Birds

“The Birds” is both a critique and a reflection of its sociohistorical context. The story is set during a period of change in Great Britain, where memories of World War II are still fresh and a different kind of war, the Cold War, is just beginning. In the early 1950s, the nation was healing from the physical and psychological wounds of the last hot war in Europe, and readers gather snippets of information about a particularly devastating wartime event whenever Nat connects his memories of the Luftwaffe to the new threat he faces. After his solitary battle with the birds in his children’s room, he encounters a lack of interest from other characters: “It was, Nat thought, like the air-raids in the war. No one down this end of the country knew what the Plymouth folk had seen and suffered” (68). Nat repeats a version of this lament several times in the story, whenever he tries to warn his neighbors or when he listens to the announcer’s tone on the wireless and hears how Londoners are acting like spectators as the birds assemble in droves.

Nat’s repetitive woeful thoughts expose a social problem of the period, which is the emotional isolation wartime survivors felt when the war ended and they had to interact with civilians who could not comprehend their trauma.