“I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten diadems, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy” (Revelation 13:1).
understanding wolfwood, the freed bird, & the bible
For ease's sake, I'm going to split this analysis into three parts: the symbolic nature of birds and how they're used in the Bible, how Wolfwood is defined in relation to birds in Trigun Maximum, and the convergence of these two ideas. Elaboration under the cut.
Birds in the Bible & What They Mean
Sparrows, ravens, and doves all make frequent appearances in the Bible. They are also all extremely common animals, with sparrows and doves (specifically turtledoves) being used as sacrifices. In Leviticus 14, several versions call for a sparrow or turtledove interchangeably (the New Oxford Annotated Bible likely uses "bird" to smooth over the difference), as they are an affordable option for purification rituals, common and relatively disposable. On the other hand, ravens are viewed as both unclean scavengers and demonstrations of God's providence.
All three of these birds fall into a paradox: the sparrow and the turtledove are insignificant and common—see Matthew 10:29 above—but can act as a purifying force when sacrificed, and the raven is looked down upon while simultaneously representing acts of "divine care". To explain the former, when these seemingly insignificant birds are sacrificed, they act as a symbolic system of substitutionary atonement; it's less about the intrinsic value of the animal, and more about what this sacrifice represents to the human offering it. Leviticus 17:11 states the following: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement." This can be better understood as a "ransom for [the sinners'] lives", as sacrificial blood not only purifies on the altar, but serves as a payment to absolve the sinner from death. Despite their supposed insignificance, God cares for all living creatures, the sparrow (and the turtledove) included.
Like the sparrow and turtledove, the raven is equally thought to be a creature of lesser value, but in direct parallel to Matthew 10:29, Jesus states in Luke 12:24 that the raven, too, is fed by God, regardless of its "unclean" nature. Its first mention in the Bible, however, is not regarding its scavenger nature, but rather, its role as the first creature sent from the ark after God's flood in Genesis. The raven here is used for God to fulfill his promise and mark the beginning of a new era; it does not return because it has found dry land to rest on and food to eat, so its dependence on the ark becomes obsolete. It has fulfilled its task of showing Noah that the Earth can be inhabited once more, and thus, it departs freely.
Wolfwood & the Freed Bird
Chapter 50.5, Freed Bird, practically hammers the idea of thinking of Wolfwood (and the children of the orphanage) as birds into the reader's head. The type of bird is less relevant because 1) Nightow seems to use multiple species in his imagery, and 2) he's focused more on the imagery that a bird presents, which is freedom.
At least, "freedom" as Maylene sees it. In her eyes, the bird soaring above and the priest sitting across from her are one and the same: beings able to choose their own path in a world where hers has already been decided. Wolfwood immediately counters this, echoing his thoughts from the opening page of the chapter, except this time, he is positioned in direct comparison to the bird through both wording and paneling, rather than beneath it. Though not explicitly stated, there is also a greater implication of what a bird like this has to do to survive; in a wasteland like Gunsmoke, most animals like that are scavengers, and all animals of that feather will kill to live. Wolfwood's response cements Maylene's assertion that he and the bird are the same, but he is not as unburdened as she believes him to be. He's a drifter without a home or an identity outside of a "priest" and a "sinner", unclean and a mediator for God all the same.
The carved birds exchanged between him and Maylene symbolize both the childhood he's been disconnected from and the children he protects; to him, a cage is satisfactory if it keeps whoever's trapped inside safe. He is the scavenger bird he pointed out to Maylene, whereas she and the Hopeland children are the carved ones, stagnant in their innocence.
Convergence
If Wolfwood can be understood as the bird, then we can reframe his ending in that context. Wolfwood spends much of the manga believing that he is past the point of redemption—most heavily alluded to when he talks about being unable to hold the children at the orphanage as his hands are too stained with blood—yet still, he seeks it. His entire character is full of contradictions like this, but for the sake of this analysis, we'll settle on one main one: he is both the sinner and the bird. The exact shape this bird takes changes throughout the story, starting with the unclean raven, who carves the path to a new era after the flood, then to the sparrow, whom God still cares for despite its small value, and lastly, both the bird exchanged for the sinner and the bird killed to purify the home.
Livio, too, is a bird in the flesh, removed from the stagnancy of Wolfwood's childhood, where the rest of the children at the Hopeland Orphanage have not yet been changed enough to be separated from the carved bird imagery. When the two of them stand at the entrance of the orphanage, they set the stage for the priest's cleansing in Leviticus 14, and from the beginning of the chapter, we know that Wolfwood will die.
Wolfwood's death functions in three parts: absolution from his past, a cleansing of Hopeland Orphanage of disease (the Chapel's desecration of the space and the sin that brings), and an exchange of ransom for Livio. It is in this trinity that he's able to bring the idea of the "freed bird" to fruition, defined on his own terms. Unlike the freedom we have seen presented in contrast to Wolfwood's ideology thus far, with Midvalley's freedom through artistic dissent and Maylene's freedom through being able to choose a new path in life, Wolfwood's idea of freedom becomes cemented in penance. Even an insignificant bird like a sparrow or a raven can find care from God, and even someone like Wolfwood, who believes they have been steeped in sin, can find salvation.
If we think of Livio as a bird, the same as Wolfwood, and understand Wolfwood's death as the cleansing (i.e., the blood that the live bird is dipped into and the blood exchanged for the life of a sinner), the story then echoes both Leviticus 14 and 17: one bird is killed to cleanse the home while the other is released to signal its completion, and one life is exchanged for the life of a sinner. This is where the lines of Wolfwood and the birds come to a close and Wolfwood finds the redemption he's been looking for.
i'm fascinated by legato and wolfwood as foils. how they are both children who were abused and stripped of autonomy who then grew up to be violent men. how each can't see himself as anything close to human, only as tool or a weapon. how they both find themselves playing second to one of the twins, becoming a follower out of choice or circumstance, wolfwood finding confirmation of God's love through vash and legato finding a god to worship in knives. but what's most interesting to me is how they're both futilely trying to earn a love that is impossible to earn.
wolfwood wants so desperately to be a good man, he tries and tries but he can't do anything to wash the blood off his hands. then vash comes along and says hey. you're a good man even if you don't think you are, and even when you aren't i love you anyway. you don't have to earn my love or anyone else's, because that's what it means to love. you can't earn something freely and unconditionally given.
and legato knows he is nothing to knives but he can't help but cling to the delusion that if he's good enough, if he can just be useful enough or obedient enough, knives will love him back. maybe someday if he's just good enough he could be knives' favorite. maybe if vash wasn't in the way knives could love him instead. but it's futile because the same way vash's love is unconditional, knives' hatred is unconditional. legato is a human being, so he is categorically something that knives hates. he could never earn knives' love because you can't earn something that was unconditionally never going to be yours.
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