Rule of Rose Mysteries

In the “Bird of Happiness” chapter, when Jennifer has Brown follow the scent of the red feather, the path that Brown takes is marked, at first, by drawings of a red bird. These drawings have been made on corridor walls as if to represent the red bird flying down these corridors. It might be that there is the idea being conveyed that Jennifer is following the flying red bird.

Along the way, Jennifer can encounter Eleanor searching for the red bird. See my previous blog post: Eleanor in the Sector 9 Turbine Area During the “Bird of Happiness” .

Brown eventually comes to a halt shortly after entering the 3rd Passenger Corridor, where a trail of fallen, and falling, red feathers begins.

Is it a coincidence that the place in the corridor where Brown halts and barks is in the vicinity of the door to the Women’s Lavatory, and the end of the trail of feathers will also be a Women’s Lavatory?

The trail of feathers is made up of feathers too large to belong to the red bird, and there are far too many on the floor, and falling from above, to belong to any single bird.

What does it mean that the feathers are continuously falling from above? The impression I get is that it means that whatever happened to the red bird was very recent… the feathers haven’t even had sufficient time to have all hit the floor yet.

Jennifer can follow these feathers up the stairs, through the one-leaf clover door, into the 2nd passenger corridor, and to the door of a Women’s Lavatory.

Once inside the Women’s Lavatory the trail of feathers is much different. More realistic.

The feathers are now small enough to have come from the red bird. And there are only just a few feathers, not so many feathers that they couldn’t have come from a single bird. And there are some dark red drops along the path that look like blood that has dripped down to the floor.

I get the impression from this scene that the previous trail of over-sized and over-many feathers was a dream exaggeration of this trail that we see now, this trail of feathers being the truer and more realistic memory upon which the dream-exaggerated trail was built. (Yes, I know that we will learn in the “Once Upon A Time” chapter that the red bird was a doll and not a living bird… nonetheless, the impression given by this scene—in my opinion—is that we have transitioned from a fantasy exaggeration of a memory to a true—or truer—memory).

The impression that we have undergone a transition from a fantasy world to a true, or truer, memory is not just a matter of the transformation of the exaggerated feather trail into a more realistic form, but also a matter of our seeming to have undergone a nearly full transition back to the orphanage itself.

The Women’s Lavatory in which Jennifer now stands is nearly identical to the Women’s Lavatory that we can find near the Reception Room of the orphanage. The only difference between the two lavatories that I can see is that there is no window in this lavatory (unlike that of the one in the orphanage).

When Jennifer opens the stall door that the feather, and blood, trail leads to, she sees what looks like a splatter of blood on the wall. This splatter of blood has some feathers stuck to it. Blood has dripped down from the splatter mark. Below the blood splatter is another drawing of the red bird (which resembles, in style of drawing, the drawings that were seen along the corridors before Jennifer and Brown encountered the exaggerated feather trail).

The red bird drawing has outstretched wings, one wing seems to be holding a fork and the other wing seems to be holding a knife. The beak of the red bird is turned upward and is wide open. The dripped blood from the blood splatter has dripped down the wall as if into the open beak of the bird. Combined with the effect given by the knife and fork, it seems as if the bird wants to eat whatever it was that splattered on the wall. But this is especially odd if it is the red bird itself that is supposed to have been splattered on the wall (as the feathers stuck to the blood splatter seem to indicate).

This drawing is also found in the Women’s Lavatory of the orphanage (near the Reception Room). But in the orphanage, the blood splatter does not look real as it does in the “Bird of Happiness” chapter. It seems to be just a rather unrealistic drawing of a blood splatter, not the real thing. And the blood does not drip down to the open beak of the red bird drawing.

When Jennifer opens the stall door in the Women’s Lavatory of the airship, she says: “Is that blood on it…?”

Then Diana and Meg arrive.

(To be continued in “Part 2″)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Mysteries, Plot Structure & Story, Symbolism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.