The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Real Spoils of War

In his Being There, Kosinski meditated on the consequences of being socialised entirely through television. The Painted Bird considers how a child might be socialised (if that doesn’t stretch the meaning of the word beyond its limits) to the chaos of war and the morally-deprived society in which it takes place. It’s not pretty.

(view spoiler)[The unnamed protagonist loses contact with his parents at age six, and isn’t reunited with them until after he turns twelve. During their separation, the boy is subject to the cruelty of the peasant society of rural Poland with its superstitious explanations of all natural phenomena, including the boy’s dark hair which makes him anathema as either a Gypsy or a Jew. He is also from time to time subject to equivalent cruelty by the invading German Army, not because he is either a Gypsy or a Jew but because he is an orphan with no obvious productive contribution to military efficiency.

After a period of understandable confusion, the boy tries desperately to make sense of his new reality. His first attempts involve treating his situation in terms of some rational standard: if he works hard, keeps his mouth shut, and obeys, he reckons he should be safe. Of course, he isn’t. Cruelty increases without apparent cause or reason.

Running away, the boy learns how to survive alone in a forest wilderness. But his isolation makes him vulnerable to capture by either the peasants or the Germans. Without communal protection he becomes doomed to a life of excruciating slavery.

He then discovers what he thinks is both community and an explanation of his plight in the Christian religion. Prayer, he believes, is the answer to his suffering. If he can build enough credit with God, he will be delivered from injustice.

But pray as he might nothing improves. In fact he is subject to extreme sexual abuse. He concludes not only that there is inherent, possibly irresistible, evil in the world but that the odds apparently favour those who side decisively with the Demon who embodies evil. This Manichaean turn may be distasteful but it appears the only way to achieve justice for his tormentors. Captured by evil, he becomes mute.

His next epiphany occurs with the defeat of the Germans by the Soviets. He is taken in, cared for, and politically indoctrinated by soldiers of the Red Army. He sees what power is meant to be: protection of the weaker by the stronger. The fact that the reader may know of a dissonance between theory and practice in Soviet society is irrelevant to the boy’s experience. He perceives this new form of power as salvation.

But salvation is only temporary. Placed in an orphanage with all the other mutilated and mentally damaged children of war, new skills of survival are required. Justice, in particular, cannot be left to social institutions, but must be seen to personally and proportionately to the offences involved. He becomes a street kid, a child of the night, a friend to low lifes and misfits. And he is comfortable.

Until his parents appear. Suffering a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, the boy considers his estranged parents as an inconvenient constraint on his freedom and potential. His fantasies and grandiose dreams of success are threatened by parental supervision. His peace is shattered by the existence of an annoying younger step-brother. He is fundamentally unfit for family life.

The rediscovery of his voice on the ski slopes of Switzerland is a rather ambiguous conclusion that the boy doesn’t comment upon. It’s unclear whether Kosinski is suggesting some sort of post-traumatic recovery or merely an explanation for how the first-person story is told at all. It is nevertheless clear that his life will never be normal in any sense of the word. (hide spoiler)]

Postscript

This article appeared in my 'feed' several days after I finished reading Kosinski. It is a re-interpretation of the Book of Job that is remarkably congruent with the thrust of Kosinski's narrative.
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articl...

View all my reviews