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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: THE PAINTED BIRD by Jerzy Kosinski
Message-ID: <1115@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Sep-85 01:31:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.1115
Posted: Wed Sep 11 01:31:16 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 09:25:00 EDT
References: <204@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Middletown NJ
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 >The question I have is whether all of this violence really
 >contributes to a meaningful development of the theme.
 >Certainly the Holocaust was horrible and grotesque, and
 >certainly _The Painted Bird_ addresses man's inhumanity to
 >man, but how does the endless string of horror address the
 >issue of why this happens?

I think if you think back on the book and separate the atrocities that
were as a result of the Holocaust with those that could have happened
in the 19th century, for example, you will discover that very little of
the book concerns itself with the Holocaust.  These are timeless
horrors.  The book for me goes a long way to explain the Holocaust as
being an organization of the mindless violence that has gone on for
centuries.  The hatred that startled the world when it was revealed had
always been around, it just had not been focused on such a small point.
It is like on a warm day the sun may not really feel so hot, but if it
is fucused with a magnifying glass it will burn paper.  The magnifying
glass is not adding any energy to the system, it is just taking the
energy that is around and directing it against a small area.  If you
read Tuchman's A DISTANT MIRROR you can see that there was a great deal
of mindless hatred and violence in Europe even in plague-ravaged
Europe.  There were small holocausts even then.  Europe had been ripe
for a big holocaust even then.  THE PAINTED BIRD denies the old
self-congradulatory idea that people are basically good.  People are
basically people and as such can be violent and stupid and above all
cruel.  As long as someone keeps thinking that people are basically
good, the Holocaust will remain a mystery and will eventually be
denied.

 >
 >The superficial answer from the book is that prejudice and
 >superstition are the large motivating force.  Because the
 >Gypsy Boy is different, he is the butt of many attacks.
 >Yes, he is the painted bird, yet isn't that quite obvious
 >and can't that be inferred from a few acts of violence?

A few acts might be coincidence.  Kozinsky wanted to show the
universality of the cruelty.

 >Isn't there more to be explored than how man is inhumane to
 >man and shouldn't there be more emphasis on why?

When trying to understand a phenomenon the first step is to establish it
exists -- in its full magnitude.  Many people cannot accept that it
exists.

 >Maybe the Gypsy Boy is supposed to represent the nameless
 >many of the Holocaust.  
 
You keep looking at the Holocaust as an isolated thing.  He represents
the victims of cruelty through history.  Or more accurately, he is an
example.
 
 >To some, it may say that we are all painted birds
 >in some respect and the world is a brutish place.  Have we
 >really expanded our way of thinking by this reductionist
 >statement?

If we come to understand mankind's cruelty a little better, yes.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper