�The Psalm of the Hoopoe Bird�
By James A. Michener
Have you ever heard the saying, �Don�t judge a book by its cover�? In the �Psalm of the Hoopoe Bird�, Jabaal appears as a comical man. He was a short, chubby man with muscles and a big bottom that jiggled when he walked. However, Jabaal was really one of the best architects the world has ever known. This story is from The Source, a historical fiction novel containing writings of events in chronological order that took place in Makor. Author James A. Michener does a fantastic job of putting these stories into fascinating order.
Jabaal was a master architectural builder. However, he was often called Hoopoe after a curious bird, the Hoopoe, unique to the area in which this story takes place, the Mideast. Jabaal appeared to the people of Makor, the town in which he lived, as a Hoopoe bird because of his nature. The bird was always occupied going from one place to another looking into holes like someone responsible for an important mission. Jabaal was just like that, for he was always scurrying about, peering into and making holes. However, Hoopoe was an insightful architect. Hoopoe�s best and last idea saved Makor for many, many years. With the help of his best friend and slave, Meshab the Moabite, he succeeded in making a secret tunnel connecting the town to its source of water, a well just outside of town. Afterwards, he buried the well. The purpose of the tunnel was to make sure enemies could not defeat them by taking their source of water away.
The reason Hoopoe did not succeed in his life and everything terrible you could possibly think of happened to him in his last years was because of his religion. At the time in which Hoopoe lived, King David ruled. His law decreed that everyone was permitted to worship his own god but must acknowledge Yahweh as the almighty and better than all other gods. Yahweh is the same god whom we now call �God�. The other existing god in that time in Makor was Baal whose name came from a man called Urbaal, from whom Jabaal was descended. Today, the god Baal is no longer worshipped. Jabaal�s wife, Kerith, worshipped Yahweh and only Yahweh because she was descended from a long line of Hebrew priests. Jabaal�s own name meant, �Yahweh is Baal.� His parents hoped that that his name would imply that he was more Hebrew than the Hebrews. However, Hoopoe worshipped Baal as well. He knew from experience that Baal ruled the soil, or so he thought.
As I said in the previous paragraph, religion led to despair for Hoopoe. Many unfortunate things happened to Hoopoe because of religion. It started when King David came to inspect the work Hoopoe had accomplished. Tragically for Hoopoe, King David refused to recognize the significance of Hoopoe�s architectural work of art, which eventually saved thousands of lives. However, a singer impressed King David. He decided to take him back to Jerusalem. Kerith, whose desire for the past three years had been to go to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh, abandoned Hoopoe and joined the singer in Jerusalem.
The main characters in this story are as follows Jabaal the Hoopoe, General Amram, and Meshab the Moabite. Despite his outward appearance, Jabaal was one of the best architects that have ever lived. He thought of one of the best architectural ideas and constructed it. His result was a tunnel that saved thousands of lives. General Amram of Makor disliked Hoopoe and his ideas through out the entire the story. Even when he proceeded with his idea and built the magnificent tunnel, Amram disapproved of it. Amram was one of the people who helped to make Hoopoe�s last years as undesirable as they were. If it had not been for Meshab the Moabite, Hoopoe�s dear friend and slave, the tunnel would not have been finished. Meshab worked for long and hard hours every day for the tunnel to reach its completion. He also corrected a big mistake that Hoopoe had make in his calculation. The tunnel would not have been finished had it not been for Meshab fixing Hoopoe�s error.
From the theme of this story, I have learned that being a good person is not always rewarded. Although Jabaal dedicated his life to saving the inhabitants of his town for hundreds of years, his life was unsuccessful. His wife deserted him. During the course of his lifetime, no one recognized the greatness of his engineering feat. His best friend was killed by the man he revered, King David, who gave him no credit for his groundbreaking accomplishment. Had it not been for these previously stated unfortunate happenings and others, Hoopoe would not have died an unhappy and unrecognized man.
In my opinion, Hoopoe was a sympathetic man on whom people picked. In every day life, there might be a nerd and a group of kids who think they are so cool. The gang tends to pick on the nerd. In �The Psalm of the Hoopoe Bird� Hoopoe is the nerd. Hoopoe is someone for whom in stories people feel sorry. They disregard the fact that Hoopoe or the character in their story appears as a comical man and conceive the truth that he may be a very intelligent man who can change society. Take Bill Gates, for example. When he was growing up, you expect such a smart person as he to be well liked by a group of kids? Now look at the humungous change he has brought the world by Microsoft. Likewise, had Hoopoe not built the tunnel, the Jewish religion might not exist today.
Just as Jabaal designed and constructed a major engineering triumph, James A. Michener has written a major literary triumph. He tells a compelling story of a difficult period of time in history. Michener brings biblical figures to life as well as filling in the story with other compelling characters that evoke deep emotions in the reader. The main character in this story, Hoopoe or Jabaal is, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, the nerd in the bunch. I felt sorry for him because of the many people who pick on him through out the course of the story and because of how disturbing and harmful the ending of the story is for him. I felt a special dislike for people like General Amram and King David. Although he was unaware of it, King David was the one most destructive to Hoopoe�s life in the story. The power of this story was such that I now am looking forward to reading more of Michener�s work.
