Samanta Schweblin’s decision to use first-person point of view of a disconnected father figure in ‘Mouthful of birds’ builds a story wherein Sara is alienated from the reader at the beginning, even without her eating of birds. This alienation, through clever use of character, narrator, and point of view choice, is the kernel that the story’s climax rotates around.
Distancing Your Character
The author’s choice of narrating character distances the reader from Sara. ‘Mouthful of birds’ opens with the narrator, who is never referred to by name and instead called “Dad”, wondering if he can avoid opening the door to his ex-wife, Silvia. He narrates that it has been four years since their split and hints that the only time Silvia and he talk is when it is about their daughter, Sara. Instantly, the reader is disconnected from Sara in both physical and emotional distance—Sara is not in the scene, but the narrator is also not emotionally close to Sara. She may be the narrator’s daughter, but he rarely has a positive thought about her during the story and seems uninvolved in her life.
Unnatural Character Behaviours
The way the narrator views and describes Sara builds upon the developing idea that Sara is different. When the narrator first sees Sara in the story, he describes her as
“sitting straight up, legs together and her hands on her knees, focusing on some point on the window or out in the yard” (p. 30).
This description of Sara is different to a ‘normal’ person. For most readers, the narrator’s description of Sara’s sitting habits highlight them as unnatural. This is then contrasted with her perfect appearance, wherein the narrator describes her body as “brimming with health”, like she had been “working out for several months” (p. 31). Her hair is shiny, and her cheeks flushed. Sara seems healthy, happy, and beautiful—but this is contrasted against the narrator then stating, “that something was really off with the kid” (p. 31).
Alienating the Reader
Additionally, the narrator looks at his daughter using a male gaze, definitively not a fatherly gaze: “She looked like those porno schoolgirls in magazines” (p. 30). This further alienates the reader from Sara through the narrator’s self-placement; he places himself at a distance from Sara, as though he is simply observing a stranger. Schweblin cleverly uses the character of a distanced father mixed with his first-person point of view to distance readers from the ‘true’ protagonist, Sara, who eats birds.
The way the characters interact with each other further builds upon the reader’s alienation from Sara. The first-person narrator consistently rotates around Sara, as though orbiting her just enough to be seen as doing his job as a father but keeping his distance enough to protect himself from Sara’s bird-eating behaviour:
“I brought Sara home . . . I couldn’t bring myself to help her. I opened the front door, and I waited there while she came and went with everything” (p. 34).
He feels obligated to ensure she is okay—“She was my daughter, right?” (p. 40)—but is horrified by what she does, and even fears for his life toward the end of the story: “I knew that, somehow, I would make it down the stairs” (p. 43).
Conclusion
In conclusion, Schweblin chose to use a distanced father as the first-person narrator to distance the readers from Sara, ultimately alienating her character and making her appear not normal. This alienation of Sara makes the story successful because the narrator toes the line between horror and obligation.