The Birds (story)
| "The Birds" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Daphne du Maurier |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Genre(s) | Horror, thriller, novelette |
| Publication type | Anthology |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Publication date | 1952 |
"The Birds" is a novelette by British writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree. It is the story of a farmhand, his family, and his community that are attacked by flocks of birds and seabirds in kamikaze missions. The story is set in du Maurier's native Cornwall shortly after the end of the Second World War. By the end of the story it has become clear that all of Britain is under aerial assault.
The story was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, released in 1963, the same year that The Apple Tree was reprinted as The Birds and Other Stories. In 2009, Irish playwright Conor McPherson adapted the story for the stage at Dublin's Gate Theatre.
The author saw a man ploughing a field while seagulls were wheeling and diving above him and composed a story of these birds growing hostile and attacking. Inspired by her quiet, rural home town in Cornwall, the story is thought to be a metaphor for the attacks on London during World War II, or The Blitz in particular.
The story has been dramatised for radio and TV on several occasions, including:
In a small Cornish seaside town in early December, there is a sudden cold snap. A wounded war veteran on military pension, Nat Hocken, is working part-time for a farm owner when he notices a large number of birds behaving strangely along the peninsula where his family lives. He attributes this to the sudden arrival of winter. That night, he hears a tapping on his bedroom window and encounters a bird that pecks his hand, causing him to bleed. As the night progresses he encounters more birds, especially those flocking into his children's room, but the birds leave at dawn. Nat reassures his wife that they were restless because of a sudden change in the weather.
The next day, Nat tells his fellow workers about the night's events, but they give his story no importance. As Nat later walks to the beach to dispose of dead birds, he notices what appear to be whitecaps on the sea, but it is actually a great line of seagulls waiting for the tide to rise. When Nat arrives home, his concerns about the aggressive behavior of the birds are confirmed by a radio report saying that birds are massing all over Britain and some people have been attacked, presumably because of the unnatural weather. When Nat notices more birds, including the gulls, above the sea waiting for the tide he decides to board up the windows and chimneys of his house as a precaution.
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Wikipedia