The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly

In this closing section, Sprout continues to languish, while Baby thrives, thematically demonstrating The Self-Sacrificial Nature of Parenting as Sprout continues to exhaust herself in watching out for Baby: “Sprout was thinner than ever. She ate only to stave off hunger and spent all her time running around looking for Greentop, so she’d gotten as small as a reed warbler” (106). The text contrasts her gauntness and exhaustion with Baby’s developing strength and grace: “Greentop took flight powerfully” (123). This alludes to Nature’s Cycle of Death and Rebirth as a theme, as Sprout symbolically approaches death and Baby grows toward having his own children.

Sprout’s selflessness is evident when she urges Baby to join the mallard ducks despite the fact that this breaks her heart; she senses that Baby’s destiny is to join Straggler’s flock, emphasizing Straggler’s symbolic importance in Baby’s life as his father, despite his absence. Sprout’s interactions with Baby in these final chapters convey a sense of finality and acceptance, demonstrating her desire to see Baby accepted by his flock and thriving, even if it means he must abandon her:

‘Mom, do you want me to leave?’ Sprout looked into Greentop’s eyes and nodded. ‘You should leave. Don’t you think you should follow your kind and see other worlds? If I could fly I would never stay here. I don’t know how I could live without you. But you should leave’ (120).

Baby’s experiences as he learns his place in the world, finally deciding to join Straggler’s flock of mallards and fly with them, exemplifies The Search for Freedom and Self-Determination as a theme. The text conveys Sprout’s heartbreak at Baby’s departure by describing her feeling of emptiness as she watches him leave, emphasizing that Sprout shaped her identity around her role as Baby’s mother: “Sprout stood on the slope, watching him return to his kind. She felt like a mere shell of herself” (121).

In addition, the weasel morphs from a terrifying antagonist in Sprout’s eyes to a fellow mother struggling to care for her babies. This subverts the weasel’s previous characterization, as signaled when Sprout realizes that the weasel, previously referred to as “he,” is in fact a “she” and a mother, like Sprout. The text recharacterizes the weasel: Instead of an antagonist, who embodies needless and cruel violence, the weasel is on a parallel journey to Sprout’s, an equally exhausting journey of commitment and devotion. They’re both languishing mothers trying to care for their young, as the text suggests when Sprout reflects that the weasel has slowed down: “Despite the lack of feathers and fat on her [Sprout’s] body, she was the best catch in the fields. But the weasel kept missing her; for some reason he had slowed down” (122).

Sprout comes across the weasel’s vulnerable babies and feels “pity for a fellow mother” (127). The babies remind her of her broken egg: “They were like the last egg she laid, the one with the soft shell that had shattered in the yard. Sprout remembered how her heart had broken” (134). She now sees the weasel not as a hated foe but as “a mother who was a bone-weary, one-eyed hunter” (127). Sprout’s death is symbolic; she continues to embody the selflessness of a mother but this time extends her self-sacrifice to the weasel’s babies: “‘Go on, eat me,’ she urged. ‘Fill your babies’ bellies’” (134).

Fittingly, Sprout dies in spring, a season traditionally associated with rebirth and rejuvenation, establishing a connection between death and birth that again alludes to Nature’s Cycle of Death and Rebirth as a theme. Through her death, Sprout allows for the continuation of the next generation of animals at the reservoir, symbolically connecting her with the acacia tree’s life cycle, in which the leaves and flowers eventually support the next season’s growth, the life cycle that inspired her name. Like her namesake, Sprout follows the journey of a sprouting bud, which blooms, dies, and finally returns to the earth to supply nutrients for future buds.