Theme Of A Bird In The House And Simple Recipes By Margaret Lrence

Memories are an important part of anyone 's lives. To remember is to reflect and to impose meaning onto past events. In the texts, “A Bird in the House”, written by Margaret Laurence, and “Simple Recipes” written by Madeleine Thien, the authors bring across the idea of memories in the main character’s retelling of their lives to show us the relationship between the characters and their fathers respectively. Through the use of visual imagery and the main character 's choice of speech, the idea of memory is emphasized and shown in both stories. In "A Bird in the House", the memories shared with us are all related to the idea of death. Specifically, death in the family as well as death in the idea of holding onto old memories. In "Simple Recipes",

In the memory regarding the day when the sparrow entered Vanessa 's bedroom, she specifically says, "I was petrified. I thought I would pass out if those palpitating wings touched me. There was something in the bird 's senseless movements that revolted me" (Laurence 307). Here we can see that the narrator 's choice of words to describe her fear towards the bird, shows a deeper meaning in terms of what she is afraid of. This goes further when Noreen says, " 'A bird in the house means a death in the house '" (307). Once Noreen brings this up, there is a sense that while the narrator reflects on this moment, it was not just the bird that frightened her but rather what the bird now meant because of what Noreen said. The bird is not simply a bird anymore, but rather an omen of death. This idea of death continues through the story because of how the idea that the bird means death is now stuck in Vanessa 's head. When her father dies later in the story, we start to wonder if perhaps looking back on the memory of the bird was a type of foreshadowing the death of her father. Another moment in this story where the choice of words by the narrator, by Vanessa which is key to the ideas of death in memories, is the moment where she burns the photo of an unknown woman. While searching in her father 's desk near the end of the story, Vanessa finds an old photograph of a woman she has never seen before. She decides to burn this image and as she does so she says, "As I watched the smile of the girl turn into scorched paper, I grieved for my father as though he had just died now" (Laurence 313). It is her choice of wording that leads up to saying 'now ', which shows us the possibility that in burning this photo, this final piece which belonged to her father, that she is finally letting him