“These leaves talk very seriously about really dark questions humans have: we don’t know what is going to happen to us when we die. This novel is an appeal to say: no, this shouldn’t happen.”Īt one point in the novel, two leaves on a tree discuss why they must fall to the ground and wonder what will happen to them when they do. He had suffered greatly as a young boy from antisemitism and at that time, in Austria and Germany, Jews were blamed for the loss of the first world war. Zipes thinks he could see the direction in which the political winds were blowing. Salten, who had changed his name from Siegmund Salzmann during his teens to “unmark” himself as a Jew in Austrian society, earned his main income as a journalist in Vienna. The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest, by Felix Salten, in its new translation by Jack Zipes. “The major theme throughout is: you don’t have a choice.”

They know they will be hunted – and they know they will die.

There is a sense at the end that Bambi and all the other wild animals in the forest are merely “born to be killed”. He is alone, totally alone … It is a tragic story about the loneliness and solitude of Jews and other minority groups.” “Bambi does not survive well, at the end.

But then, sadly, the old prince also dies, leaving Bambi utterly bereft. Bambi is shot too, but survives thanks to the old prince, a majestic stag who treats him like a son (and may well be his father). And I think what shakes the reader is that there are also some animals who are traitors, who help the hunters kill.”Īfter Bambi’s mother is murdered, so is his beloved cousin Gobo, who had been led to believe he was special and the hunters would be “kind” to him. It soon becomes apparent that the forest animals are living out their lives in fear and that puts the reader constantly “on edge”: “All the animals have been persecuted.

Felix Salten’s handwritten dedication to his wife Ottilie on a page from the first English edition of Bambi.

Bambi 1929 edition