The Painted Bird

The fact that every culture tears apart its own “painted birds” suggests that humans and society are inherently disposed to violence and cruelty. The peasants are isolated, appearing left behind by time—in other words, humans at their most primitive. However, they are no more violent than those in civilized society. After all, the boy goes to the village to begin with in order to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. This brutality is often demonstrated in the mirroring of the human and animal worlds. For example, the cats mating on the floor of the miller’s house mimic the sexual affair of the plowboy and the miller’s wife. Similarly, the cannibalistic rats in the military bunker seem to reflect the way people turn on each other. Even Labina’s sexual escapades are described in animalistic terms. This language and these metaphors suggest that not much separates animals from humans. 

Sex in The Painted Bird tends to be depraved and described in animalistic terms: the miller’s wife and the plowboy are compared to mating cats; Ludmila sexually assaults the boy (and is beaten by the peasants as they lie with her);