![]() ![]() Birds are eminently suited to the task, light, powerful, sturdy little dinosaurs with sharp beaks and claws and the advantage of stealth and flight. The story is this: Birds start to attack people. If you’re running from something – as the farmer Nat Hocken learns – you’ve got to run a long way before you come to shelter. The author intended to set the story in a place far from help or solace: It’s set on a wild Cornish coastline of blank fields and isolated farmhouses, set far apart. Many writers have done it (including Ray Bradbury with tennis shoes, a children’s swing set, etc.) but du Maurier does it with absolute conviction and a terrible elan.Īnyone who knows The Birds at all is probably thinking of the noir 1963 film by Alfred Hitchcock, which is set in gentle, sunny California. ![]() This technique is sometimes called “The Freudian uncanny” – a way of investing ordinary things with creeping horror. ![]() If you haven’t read Daphne du Maurier’s short story, The Birds, you haven’t begun to see just how creepy an ordinary thing can be. ![]()
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