Felix Salten was a Hungarian Jew whose family moved to Austria shortly after he was born, when Austria offered Jews full citizenship. He wrote several stories featuring animals as main characters, and his books were banned by the Nazis in 1936.
I began reading Bambi for my Disney Reading Challenge. Based on the movie, I expected it to be a novel written to deter hunting, and certainly many people have read it that way, but the further into the book I got, the more it seemed that this was a book about hunting the way Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita was a book about the Faust story. Hunting provides the plot, but the real story is about something else.
Almost everyone knows the story, at least as the movie presented it. The novel is darker, soaked in the terror the animals feel for Him, the constantly capitalized pronoun for the human hunters. Bambi begins life innocent of the dangers He poses, and is only gradually taught the reasons for his mother’s caution. The novel traces Bambi’s development into an adult and a prince of the forest.
Trying to interpret the symbolism of a book always makes me want to pile on disclaimers, because I don’t feel particularly good at it. Sadly, symbolism has to be pretty obvious for me to get it.
While Bambi is more than a simple allegory, it is the oppressive forces of totalitarianism and enforced social conformity, rather than hunting, which are the focus of condemnation here. The human hunters are organized and powerful and remorseless, unlike the woodland animals, who kill individually and out of simple bloodlusts. The human hunters enlist other animals (like dogs) in their hunt, and (in the novel) they kill massively and indiscriminately.
Animals who aid or abet Him are held in particular contempt. Gobo, a deer captured and hand-fed by Him, returns to the wild with stories of His kindness, only to die from stupidly trusting Him. The dog is attacked for serving Him in his hunt. Domesticated species are reviled for being traitors.
The high point of the book comes when Bambi is travelling through the woods with his father, who has been imparting his wisdom to his son before his own death. They smell Him in the woods and hear the terrible sound of his gun. Bambi’s father insists that they move closer, telling Bambi that this time is different. They find the man lying dead on the ground, and Bambi’s father says:
“Do you see how he’s lying there dead, like one of us? Listen, Bambi. He isn’t all-powerful as they say. Everything that lives and grows doesn’t come from Him. He isn’t above us. He’s just the same as we are. He has the same fears, the same needs, and suffers in the same way. He can be killed like us, and then he lies helpless on the ground like all the rest of us, as you see him now.”
There was a silence.
“Do you understand me, Bambi?” asked the old stag.
“I think so, “Bambi said in a whisper.
“Then speak,” the old stag commanded.
Bambi was inspired, and said trembling, “There is Another who is over us all, over us and over Him.”
I don’t think the author is trying to make any particular statement about God, but rather the inevitable destruction of forces that try to restrict and enslave the spirit of the individual.
There are other elements that do not fit perfectly into an allegorical interpretation, and the novel can be enjoyed for Salten’s beautiful descriptions of the forest and its creatures alone. It was worth reading once, and I will probably read it again, though it will be awhile till my kids are old enough to handle the scary parts.
8 responses so far ↓
1 bubandpie // Aug 20, 2007 at 7:41 am
It sounds very bleak - the kind of story one is amazed anyone thought appropriate for children.
2 Luisa Perkins // Aug 20, 2007 at 10:06 am
I love Bambi, and I love Salten’s Perri (about a squirrel) even more. I remember reading it one summer in my grandmother’s hammock. But I’ve always been attracted to dark stories. I loved your review; I’m glad to discover your book blog! I didn’t know about it before this post.
3 Pieces // Aug 20, 2007 at 10:56 am
A far cry from the Disney version, as I suspected. Thank you for the great review of the book. I never got around to reading a book to participate, although I will have a slightly related post later today.
4 At A Hen's Pace // Aug 25, 2007 at 8:52 am
I read this as a child–maybe 12? I loved it but couldn’t remember why. Your review brought it all back–the characters, the poignancy of the story. Thank you!
5 Mindy Withrow // Aug 25, 2007 at 9:00 am
I am ashamed to admit that I thought Walt came up with this storyline! Now I will have to read the novel.
I find it interesting that so many “children’s stories” and nursery rhymes are based on dark, sometimes even grisly, books or historical situations–like the reading primers used in colonial America (”D” is for “death,” children…). I guess when your life span is only 35 years, you jump right in to the tougher life lessons.
Thanks for your review, and for your comment on my blog this morning. This was my first visit, but I’ll be back.
6 Laura // Aug 25, 2007 at 10:57 am
I read Bambi as a child and didn’t see the Disney movie until I was an adult. I really enjoyed the book, and have each of my children read it when they reach 12.
Did you know that Whittaker Chambers, the former Communist and author of Witness was the original translator of Bambi? And that his old college buddy, Clifton Fadiman, was the one who sent the manuscript his way to do it?
7 Sherry // Aug 25, 2007 at 10:38 pm
I read Bambi as a child and I don’t remember being scared or depressed by it at all. I think a lot of things passed over my head back then even though I read them.
8 allrileyedup // Aug 26, 2007 at 9:50 pm
I’ll start with saying I have not read the book.
I don’t know if I necessarily think Bambi the movie is a deter-hunting movie. While some people think twice about hunting after seeing it, I saw the movie as, simply put, a depiction of life. Bambi is born, experiences childhood, loses his innocence, grows up, and has his own family. The loss of his mother is admittedly at the hands of a hunter, but if she had died in any other way, he still would have suffered the loss.
That’s an interesting excerpt you included. It honestly makes me want to read the whole book now. If that is how the rest of the book reads, I think the filmmaker did a reasonable job of capturing the tone. The movie stag seems true to the book character, as the wise older one who teaches Bambi what he needs to know, speaks succinctly, and with a commanding tone. Bambi is the young one, in the learning stage, so he whispers, he doesn’t speak with as much confidence, and he is still trying to make sense of what he experiences. Bambi behaves in this manner throughout the movie, even though they don’t include the dead hunter scene. Then there is the sentence “There was a silence.” One of my favorite things about the Bambi movie is how silent the whole film is. The music is minimal, none of it is of the chirpy irritating tra-la-la variety, and in the scene when the stag tells Bambi his mother is not coming back, they use dead silence and a single tear from Bambi to convey the loss.
The movie treats some aspects of social conformity. Bambi calls skunk ‘Flower,’ and continues to do so even after he knows he isn’t one. Thumper is constantly chastised by his mother for not behaving like everyone else. In the meadow scene, when viewers are first introduced to Man, there is a bird who is freaking out, who winds up taking flight, and is consequently shot. This does the job of conveying both the terror the animals feel of Man and also teaches the dangers of not listening to the group. The other birds told her to stay still, to be calm, but did she listen? No. And now she’s dead.
Anyways, I’ve gone on waaaaaay longer than I meant to, but thanks for the interesting book remarks. I’m definitely going to try to get this at my library.
Leave a Comment