Chaos in their wings…

While reading this novel I have noticed every time that a bird is seen or heard there is danger just beyond its flapping wings. “ They were both trying to joke. But they couldn’t. There must be something terribly wrong and they knew it but neither one knew how to put it into words. The birds, being gone, had taken some mysterious presence with them. There was an awful sense of void - as if the world had emptied.” (Findley page 76) The birds are symbolising the danger and terrors that are to come. Fleeing from the danger and atrocities of war. Seconds later Robert falls into the big mud pit where he almost loses his life. Then once again later on in the novel “The silence could only mean one thing. The Germans were going to attack. All at once- a bird sang over their heads. Someone swore;  as if the bird had given them away.” (Findley page 122). Robert and his men are planting a mortar gun in a giant crater created by another mortar shell. This crater is twenty feet or less away from the Germans front lines. Seconds after this bird flies above, Toxic chlorine gas is hauntingly approaching the crater that the men are in. It does not say anywhere in the text that the birds are a sign of danger to come, but basically every time any kind of danger that occurs your more then likely to find a bird near by in the reading.