However, the Old Man is not fooled as it is revealed that he was not a prisoner but a guard who starved the prisoners and killed his fellow guards in order to stay alive. Throughout, the Strange Bird attempts to escape by camouflaging with the background. The Old Man tells the Strange Bird many stories of his past, most of which she does not care for. Foxes once again appear outside the Strange Bird’s prison, whom the Strange Bird starts to view as friendly. Throughout this period, the Strange Bird fears that at any moment she may be eaten, a direct psychological result of the scientists’ attempt to eat the laboratory animals. The Old Man names the Strange Bird Isadora and treats her as a pet. After these meetings, a storm hits the Strange Bird, which results in her being knocked unconscious.Īfter the storm, the Strange Bird wakes up in a jail cell, where her keeper is the gaunt Old Man, who claims to have been a prisoner in this abandoned prison.

The character Sanji, a woman who worked in the laboratory caring for the Strange Bird, and her companion are revealed in a dream. The Strange Bird is again rejected when she meets the dark wings, an abandoned aircraft of a country long-since destroyed. However, these birds reject her as “There was too much else inside her” (8). The Strange Bird encounters a flock of birds which she attempts to greet. The novel then follows the Strange Bird, as she rather naively heads south over a desert.

However, she is only met with foxes who chase her. At first, the Strange Bird searches for a home and for others of her kind. Upon escaping from the laboratory, the Strange Bird explores the area and follows an internal compass that is leading her southeast. The Strange Bird, therefore, straddles the line between nature, humanity, and technology and has certain epiphanies about each of them.Īt the start of the novel, the Strange Bird escapes from a laboratory used to test on animals. The Strange Bird is a biotech creation that is a mix of multiple different animals, including humans, and technology. Vandermeer uses third-person limited voice to describe the journey through the eyes of the Strange Bird. Jeff Vandermeer’s novel is divided into 23 chapters detailing the journey of a Strange Bird as she follows her inner compass through a post-apocalyptic world. The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Vandermeer, Jeff.

Jeff vandermeer the strange bird