White Bird: A Wonder Story

Vivienne and Jean-Paul Beaumier

Vivienne and Jean-Paul Beaumier are Julien’s parents. Jean-Paul is a sewer worker, and the family live a far less affluent life than what Sara is used to; nevertheless, they unhesitatingly take her in during the war, hiding her at great risk to their own lives and caring for her as one of their own.

The Beaumiers are warm and accepting people, who welcome Sara into their lives—not only do they provide her a place to live, but they take the extra effort to make her living quarters clean and hospitable, as well as offer her words of comfort. The Beaumiers believe that the triumph of good over evil is in the hands of man—they understand that human beings are responsible for stopping the violence and hate in the world, and this makes them brave.

They also, however, understand the importance of small kindnesses in tandem with large acts of bravery, in a time of crisis—Vivienne asserts that this is what reminds one of their humanity, taking the effort to spend time with Sara every day, as well as make her birthday special. In time, Sara becomes a beloved member of their family—even after Julien passes away and the war ends, the Beaumiers and Sara remain close; they eventually walk her down the aisle when she gets married and remain important people in her life until their passing.

Max and Rose Blum—or Papa and Maman, as Sara refers to them—are Sara’s parents. Max is a renowned surgeon, and Rose is a highly qualified math teacher holding an advanced college degree in mathematics. Max and Rose are both foreign-born, non-religious French Jews. Although they are French citizens, the fact that they are Jewish and naturalized leaves them open to persecution from the Nazis.

Despite the times, Max does not believe in labelling people as “good” and “bad”—he even encourages his daughter, Sara, to see things in terms of “light” and “dark,” asking her to stay strong within rather than judge and blame someone else. Although Max believes in the inherent goodness of people, he is nevertheless a practical man—following Sara’s first experience with anti-Semitism in school, he suggests that the Blums leave France, understanding the danger their family is in. Rose, however, is more optimistic and attached to France. She does not want to uproot her family and chooses to believe that the danger will pass. In this, Sara takes after her Maman. She stays in denial about the drastically changing circumstances around her until she is brutally forced to confront her new reality. Unfortunately, Maman does not survive the war—she is rounded up and sent to Auschwitz, where she dies. True to Julien’s intuition, however, Sara does eventually reunite with Papa, who lives long enough to walk her down the aisle when she gets married years later.

Vincent is a student at the École Lafayette, a few years older than Sara and Julien. A handsome and popular boy whom all the girls have crushes on, Vincent is one of the people who actively seeks out and torments Julien. His father is revealed to be working for the Nazis, and Vincent himself later joins the Milice.

All throughout the book, Vincent is consistently cruel in his behavior towards those weaker than him. Even before the war, he would bully and torture Julien; when the war commences, Vincent finds a sanctioned outlet for his brutish instinct, targeting Jews in addition to all the others deemed inferior by the Nazis. He is the one who alerts the gendarmes to where the maquisard and the Jewish children are hiding. When he attacks Julien in the barn, he expresses hate and disgust for Julien’s condition; he is also assumed to be responsible for Julien’s arrest.

Vincent is a flat character, with a single, overarching quality of cruelty that is present throughout his arc. He plays the villain in the story, a character representing and belonging to the evil that was the Nazi party, and the human instinct for violence and cruelty at large. Vincent’s character meets a cathartic end, as he is attacked and killed by a wolf in the forest, an animal that initially represented man’s darker instincts in the book. The manner of his death also symbolizes how, if left unchecked, man’s instincts for oppression and violence will lead to his own end.