ALfred Hitchcocks Films - Essay Example

The birds have been interpreted in literature and in psychoanalysis as the turbulent aspect of the unconscious mind and for iconology; it represented the demons and predators.2 And for Hitchcock in this movie, the birds were the Furies bringing with it not justice but sheer wrath to people and their community. The birds played a direct role in the development of the story as they were used as tool of aggression. The birds primarily represented the maternal ego. Hitchcock, himself stated that the film was supposed to tell the story of a possessive mother and that her love for her son dominated all of her other emotions.

3 This maternal principle was represented by the birds’ attacks – the screeching, capricious, wildly destructive assaults are coordinated with evidence of the rapid collapse of a hysterical and largely matriarchal society that itself was a response to the arrogance and devastation brought about by patriarchy. In Mitch’s mother, we found a woman suffering the tragedy of a son playing with the chaos of his sexual life and her emotional breakdown when some woman finally managed to take him away.

Then it’s also possible that Hitchcock meant for the birds to represent a number of other things. For instance, there is the possibility that the birds symbolized the various aspects of human behavior not only as demonstrated by the Mitch’s mother’s attitude, that it could represent sexual flirtation and tension, unrequited love or a small town’s inability to be friendly to strangers. From another perspective, a critique was suggested at the end of the movie. When they were leaving the town, Cathy asked if they could bring the lovebirds, that they “haven’t harmed anyone.

” The lovebirds were allowed to join the refugees and this posed a lot of meanings for the audience: that the lovebirds are quiet because of what their name embodies; or that they are