Magical Realism

In class on Friday, the topic of Magical Realism was brought up. I thought it was interesting to think about how Painted Bird is magical realism. When looking up the definition, it seems that magical realism is based around having two polar opposites. For example, focusing on death and life. It seems like in painted bird, all of the people believe in very outdated superstitions, yet the time period is the 1950's during war. Everyone around them is using guns and grenades, yet a man has his eyes gauged out with a spoon and people believe spitting three times keeps a vampire away. The villages almost give off a medieval feel due to how the people act. Another way, is how this little boys life seems to be clouded with death everywhere he goes. Every new house, someone dies as this little boy struggles to survive. Kosinski seems to try to show the gap of life and death through magical realism.

http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/MagicalRealism.html heres just a website to look at different books that are magical realism and more in depth definitions and examples.