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. However, while Nat’s trauma from the Blitz complicates his relationships, the Cold War is beginning to cause new social problems: Unlike World War II, the Cold War was fought through subterfuge, propaganda, and the regular exchange of threats between capitalist democracies (like Britain) and Stalin’s Soviet Union, and this warfare’s mysterious nature endowed Russia with diabolical powers in the minds of ordinary British citizens. During Nat’s last conversation with his employer, Mr. Trigg says, “Well, what do you make of it? They’re saying in town the Russians have done it. The Russians have poisoned the birds” (79). Both Nat and Mr. Trigg are skeptical. There is no logical way the Russians could have poisoned every bird in the country, and there is no known poison that could incite the birds to organize and wage war on humans. The townspeople’s rumors symbolize the extent of the paranoia throughout British society. People were afraid to trust each other, afraid that anyone could be a Russian spy, and especially afraid of a nuclear war. Nat seems untouched by Cold War paranoia, however, which allows him to see his world clearly.

Despite the constant fear of communism and nuclear war, British society thrived in the 1950s, and there was an economic boom with new industries and higher wages. The government invested in social programs like expanded education opportunities and affordable housing. These programs enabled British families to improve their status and rise in the social hierarchy, something that had been difficult to accomplish before World War II. In “The Birds,” Nat lives near a new affordable housing development, or council houses, where Jill’s fellow students reside as members of the new middle class. Nat also lives near the Triggs’ farm, a traditional British home that probably has a long family history, as was common for established middle-class landowners. With his wartime disability, pension, and job as a farmworker, Nat is an outsider in this social context. Jim the cowman is closest to Nat in social class, but Nat believes Jim resents him because Nat “[r]ead[s] books, and the like” (67). So even with someone of his own class, Nat is an interloper because he educates himself. His isolated status is complete.