The Sparrows Are Flying Again Meaning

A tenant's missing rent payment leads to a tough, street-smart property owner'south ghastly discovery. She enters the apartment unit of measurement to collect her money, but apace realizes that she has stumbled upon a gruesome murder scene. Overcome with shock, the landlady screams. Then she faints. On the wall near a savagely mutilated body, a mysterious bulletin is finger-scrawled in claret:

THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN.

A ruthless homicidal rampage in Stephen Rex'south The Nighttime One-half thus continues. Information technology can only finish with the inevitable showdown between the novel's main character, author Thad Beaumont, and the killer George Stark (1). The connectedness betwixt the two characters is complicated, with readers gradually finding out that Stark is much more than than just Beaumont'southward more successful and darker pseudonym come-to-life. Equally the story progresses, we learn more, too, most the mysterious and e'er-growing number of sparrows.

"Dorsum to Endsville"

The birds turn out to exist escorts to the realm of the dead, an underworld which King at times calls "Endsville." Such guides, known traditionally as pyschopomps, accept historically taken on various forms in religion, folklore, and literature. These tin include human or human-like beings. For example, Charon, the ferryman of the Greek/Roman underworld, is probably the most notable and familiar of psychopomps. Animals, angels, and other beings, even so, can too fulfill these roles.

Another well-known psychopomp is the "ominous bird of yore" in Edgar Allen Poe'south "The Raven," who may be accounted a messenger from Hades or "Nighttime'southward Plutonian Shore" (2, 3). Has the raven not taken off with the protagonist'south spirit, swept away all promise of the narrator ever joining his deceased mistress ("my soul… shall exist lifted—nevermore!")? Or maybe something more than sinister has occurred—possibly the late mistress has been consigned to hell, and her lover learns from this ebony feathered "devil" that he, too, is to be ushered in that location but, equally part of his torment, forever denied her presence. Having destroyed the matter that has sustained the speaker in his life, he is left at the very least in the raven'south "shadow" of despair, what could exist interpreted as either a literal or metaphorical state of the expressionless.

"Screaming of vast flocks"

As ane of the characters (a folklore professor and Beaumont'southward colleague) in The Nighttime Half explains, whippoorwills and loons are amid the birds about ordinarily identified equally psychopomps. Swallows are also mentioned. And although ravens exercise non appear in the novel, Rex interestingly credits his inspiration to the sighting of a massive flock of crows, as well every bit to an H.P. Lovecraft poem (4). Psychopomps are a theme in several of Lovecraft's works. For example, whippoorwills assume this role in his short story "The Dunwich Horror," of which beneath is a brief excerpt:

That Hallowe'en the hill noises sounded louder than e'er, and burn down burned on Sentinel Hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled about the unlighted Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandemoniac cachinnation which filled all the countryside, and not until dawn did they finally quiet downwardly (5).

The story remains ane of Lovecraft's virtually pop works. His poem "Psychopompos: A Tale in Rhyme" (perhaps the one to which Male monarch is referring) doesn't mention whippoorwills, crows, or sparrows. Instead, it features a sinister "howling railroad train" of wolves "that rend the air" to collect a dead male child'due south soul from his parents (half dozen). The description, though, is clearly evocative of the Wild Chase stories often linked with Gabriel's Hounds and the Seven Whistlers (7). These feared creatures were believed to ride out at night, specially around the wintertime solstice, and snatch off with victims' souls. Perhaps a combination of this poem and the whippoorwills of "The Dunwich Horror" actually influenced Rex.

"The whistler shrill, that who so heares doth dy"

Every bit the name suggests, the Seven Whistlers consist of vii birds who brand loud, frightful, pipe/blowing noises. The types nigh often associated with the deadly flock are curlews, widgeons, golden plover, and wild geese (viii). Many poets have expressed fascination with the fable. William Wordsworth, for instance, refers to it in his sonnet "Though Narrow Be that Erstwhile Human's Cares":

He the 7 birds hath seen, that never part,
Seen the Vii Whistlers in their nightly rounds,
And counted them: and ofttimes volition kickoff—
For overhead are sweeping Gabriel's Hounds
Doomed, …. (nine)

As the ornithologist Edward Armstrong also notes, English poet Edmund Spenser in his sixteenth-century epic The Faerie Queene cites the notorious flock among the "fatall birds": "The whistler shrill, that who and then heares doth dy" (x, 11). The creatures are the subject field of Victorian poet Alice E. Gillington's "The Seven Whistlers" (12). However, despite the similarities in Whistler lore with the poem by Lovecraft, he does not mention whatsoever birds by name that were unremarkably thought of as Whistlers in his "Psychopompos: A Tale in Rhyme."

Of course, none of birds connected with the legends of the Great Hunt seem well-nigh as menacing as those in Male monarch's The Night Half. His sparrows display a viciousness reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, yet surpassing in their ferocious intensity. Who knew that birds could exist then terrifying?

In the easily of great horror writers, any animal may well assume a frightening presence, in this example a small bird commonly establish throughout the world and occasionally accounted a pest. The sparrow may exist an appropriate option for psychopomp due to its near-universal presence, a symbolic reminder that death, though it may seem hidden in the properties of our lives, remains close by.

So along with the haunting figure of Poe's demonic raven and the screaming whippoorwills of Lovecraft, permit's not forget the flesh-devouring sparrows of Stephen King this Halloween.

Sources:

1. King, Due south. The Dark Half. New York: Viking Penguin, 1989.
2. Poe, E.A. "The Raven," The Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178713.
3. Cross, R.T. "Psychopomp," eleven/29/2011, The Etyman Language Weblog: http://etyman.wordpress.com/tag/psychopomp/.
4. King, S. "The Dark Half: Inspiration," Stephen Rex's official web site: http://stephenking.com/library/novel/dark_half_the_inspiration.html.
5. Lovecraft, H.P. "The Dunwich Horror," The H.P. Lovecraft Annal: http://world wide web.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/dh.aspx.
6. Lovecraft, H.P., "Psychopompos: A Tale in Rhyme," The H.P. Lovecraft Archive: http://world wide web.hplovecraft.com/writings/poetry/p139.aspx.
7. Armstrong, E.A. The New Naturalist: A Survey of British Natural History – The Sociology of Birds: An Enquiry into the Origin & Distribution of Some Magico-Religious Traditions. London: Willmer Brothers & Haram Ltd., Birkenhead for Collins Clear-Type Press. pp. 217-220.
8. Armstrong, E.A. pp. 217-220.
9. Wordsworth, W. "Though Narrow Be that Former Man'due south Cares,"William Wordsworth: The Consummate Poetical Works. Bartleby.com (1999): http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww339.html.
10. Armstrong, E.A.. pp. 217-218.
11. Spenser, Eastward. The Faerie Queene (Volume II, Canto XII, Stanza XXXVI), Edmund Spenser: The Complete Poetical Works. Bartleby.com (2010): http://www.bartleby.com/153/55.html.
12. Gillington, A.Due east. "The Seven Whistlers,"A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895: Selections Illustrating the Editor's Critical Review of British Poetry in the Reign of Victoria. Edmund Clarence Stedman (editor). Bartleby.com (2003): http://world wide web.bartleby.com/246/1159.html.

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