It always seems very mysterious to me when an author decides to leave the main character nameless. It made me a little curious as to the motives an author would have for leaving this detail out of a story, so I naturally turned to Google. After searching for a while, I stumbled upon a term I had learned about before: naturalism. I decided to read over it to remind myself of the basic characteristics of a naturalistic piece of literature. This type of writing involves pessimism, nameless characters, determinism, and a twist at the end of a plot. Of course, we haven't finished the story yet, so I can't confirm that a twist occurs at the end of The Painted Bird, but I can easily see where the other characteristics come into play in the story. I then decided that this story seems to be very naturalistic. The story is pessimistic in the sense that the boy gets nowhere. He is basically moving on from one disaster to another, experiencing things that can easily traumatize a person. Determinism involves a predetermined fate for the main character; this fate is largely determined by the natural surroundings of the individual. Perhaps the heavy emphasis on animals could have something to do with the boy's fate. From what I've read so far, each of the characteristics of naturalism seems to be embedded in the pages of The Painted Bird.
To read more about naturalism in literature, go to:
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/naturalism-in-literature.html
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