The Birds Ending?

[Scarlett Dean]

I happened to catch the last 15 mins of The Birds yesterday. It still grips me and although I've seen it a hundred times, I have to keep watching till the end.
So my question is probably a familiar one, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
Does anyone really know why the birds attacked?
God, I love Hitchcock. He still has us asking this question.
Curious to see the responses.

[Margot Renne Payne]

Here is one brief explanation of the short story.

After its publication in 1952 in her short story collection The Apple Tree, ‘‘The Birds’’ became one of Daphne du Maurier's most celebrated works. The story presents an unrelenting portrait of terror and a compelling analogy of the atmosphere of fear generated in America and Europe during the Cold War years.

Covering only a few days in the life of a family living on the Cornish coast of England, ‘‘The Birds’’ examines what would happen if animals traditionally regarded as symbols of peace and freedom began to ruthlessly attack humans. The story opens in the middle of the night when farm worker Nat Hocken wakes to an insistent tapping at his window. Du Maurier quickly increases the tension and horror as Nat's family suffers several vicious attacks by hordes of swarming birds, seemingly bent on destruction.

Richard Kelly, in his article on du Maurier for Twayne 's English Authors Series Online notes, ‘‘by limiting the focus of her story upon Nat Hocken and his family, du Maurier manages to convey the effect of a believable claustrophobic nightmare.’’ This sense of claustrophobia is heightened by the story's references to the bombing raids England endured during World War II and the paranoid atmosphere created by the threat of nuclear holocaust during the middle of the twentieth century. Eleven years after it was written, the story was turned into a popular film version by Alfred Hitchcock.

Source: The Birds: Introduction." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 23 June 2007. .

[Scarlett Dean]

I didn't know that. Incredible. Thanks for the info. I'll have to watch it again with this new viewpoint. Do you think Hitchcock was going for a different angle, a different message or just having twisted fun?

[Margot Renne Payne]

This is from my blog post of several weeks ago--and is from the following book which I highly recommend.

Daphne du Maurier's Classics of the Macabre, illustrated by Michael Foreman. From the front of the book in "Note to the Reader" du Maurier comments that many of her ideas... have come to me while travelling abroad and were sparked off by observing people who for one reason or another caught my eye.

She states further, "A great many people have seen the Hitchcock film of The Birds, based on my story of the same name though, of course, the setting has been changed to America and the narrative has been altered. The idea for the story was born on my daily walks along the Cornish cliffs. I would see the farmer ploughing his fields, his tractor followed by flocks of gulls screaming and crying. As they dived for worms and insects, I thought: 'Supposing they stop being interested in worms?' "

[Margot Renne Payne]

I don't know about Hitchcock. He definitely would do something twisted! The story is very different from the movie, though.

[Kathryn Lilley]

I don't know what set off the birds in the movie, but I had great fun thinking about scenes from that movie this morning, as I watched a standoff between assorted birds at my house, and my cat. I think it must be nesting season. Every year around this time, the birds get very upset when they catch a glimpse of my cat through the window. They perch on a chair or a limb near the window, and screech at him at top volume. I've even seen them dive-bomb the screen. This of course, drives the cat crazy. (He's an inside cat, partly for the safety of the birds, and partly for the safety of the cat). The birds get very feisty. I can envision a species of birds feeling threatened by humans, and turning on us in a similar fashion.

[Amanda Stevens]

It's amazing the lasting impact a good story (or movie) can have. It's been years since I last saw the movie, but it's the first thing I think of when birds start to congregate.

[Lonnie Cruse]

Not only does he still have us asking why the birds attacked, but he still has us afraid to go into the shower. The man was a genius.

[Dianne Day]

One day last week I was in my car, sitting by the bay where I live (100+ miles from Bodega Bay, where the film The Birds was made), and a huge flock of gulls descended right around where I was parked. There were so many of them that when they flew over, for a moment it was like this huge shadow overhead. Spooky. Of course I thought of Hitchcock's film -- and even if I'd never seen it, it was scary. Though the original story is even scarier.

Those real-life gulls around my car did behave oddly too -- I didn't stay long, told myself I was leaving because I didn't want white bird droppings all over the car, but the truth was I just felt nervous with too many gulls around, though they weren't doing anything. I see them there every day, just not that many and not usually on the pavement of the parking lot. When I started the car to drive away, they didn't fly off either. The sound of the motor didn't frighten them. I backed out slowly and then proceeded forward equally slowly, and they must have gotten out of the way because I didn't run over anything -- but when I looked back after getting out into the main road, they were still there on the pavement in the parking lot, and on the path and the grass in front of it by the bay.

Later on I read an article in National Geographic about swaming behavior, what causes it and what goes wrong, and I got into this sort of fantasy thing about What If something suddenly popped up in the evolution of bird life so that they might swarm, as in the magazine. So far as I remember, only insects swarm at this point in time. No warmblooded creatures.

Now there's this question on Crimespace about The Birds. Is this some kind of weird synchronicity, or what?

Dianne