The Girl Who Raised Pigeons, Book Review Example

When reading Edward P. Jones’ The Girl Who Raised Pigeons, two central ideas, brought up in the lines of the story by the author, could be identified. The first, to my mind, is all about human acceptance of death and the human strive to prevent those near and dear to us from the pain of loosing someone in our life. Robert, Betsy Ann’s father, who has already suffered the lost of his beloved wife Clara as a result of the brain tumor growth, is doing everything possible to prevent his daughter from the sight of her pigeons’ possible death “for years after he relented, Robert Morgan would rise every morning his daughter, go out onto the roof … looking for dead pigeons. He thought that by getting there before his daughter, he could spare her the sight and pain of any dead bird…” (Dixon, 91). To my mind, an analogy can be drawn in the relations and destinies of Robert and Clara and Betsy Ann and her pigeons – in the end both Robert and Betsy Ann witness the unexpected and unthought-of deaths of their beloved ones: just as Clara’s brain tumor was a surprise for her and Robert, so could no one predict that the emergence of the rats due to abandonment of the street would cause the death of the Betsy Ann’s pigeons.

The second idea, which goes parallel with the first throughout the story, is the one about the maturity and adolescence of the person. The author gives the readers a deep inside into Betsy Ann’s birth and child years, in order for those to see a transaction from an infant, who experienced the passing of each other with her mother “as if along the corridor, one into death, the other into life” (Dixon, 93), to a eight-year-old girl, who screamed at the fluttering and meanly looking at her pigeons, and than to an eleven-year-old, who “remained a bulldog about” her father letting her to get the pigeons. In my opinion, the primary symbol of Betsy Ann’s maturity was her first dead pigeon, when she had no desire to let her father know about it, combined with the daily ritual of looking after them. Finally, the author meets the girl’s adolescence with the scene of fourteen dead pigeons and marks its logical acceptance with the good-bye scene for the only two survived pigeons. Through the description of the above mentioned story scenes, the readers are able to acknowledge Betsy’s behavioral changes and maturity as well as acknowledge her gradual acceptance of life and death.

Works Cited

Dixon, Terrell. City Wilds. “The Girl Who Raised Pigeons”, pp. 89-108. University of Georgia Press, 2002.