Chap­ter 38 begins with a chill­ing descrip­tion of a bar­ren land­scape, lit­tered with the remains of thir­ty-two dead crows, each arranged in a pre­cise for­ma­tion as the after­math of a crow hunt. The cold air is sharp, every breath bit­ing into the narrator’s lungs, inten­si­fy­ing the oppres­sive atmos­phere that sur­rounds them. The stark con­trast between life and death is unde­ni­able, as the life­less crows are posi­tioned in a way that evokes the feel­ing of an eerie math problem—an unset­tling image of cold, cal­cu­lat­ed death. Their feath­ers, once vibrant, now lie scat­tered across the ground, and their vacant eyes seem to stare out into noth­ing­ness, reflect­ing a pro­found sense of loss and empti­ness. The nar­ra­tor con­tem­plates the strange com­mu­nal nature of the crows, pon­der­ing whether their indi­vid­ual deaths rep­re­sent a deep­er con­nec­tion between them—a sin­gle enti­ty frag­ment­ed into many forms. This thought lingers in their mind, adding an exis­ten­tial lay­er to the scene, where the loss of life is not just indi­vid­ual but sym­bol­ic, a painful reminder of how inter­con­nect­ed life and death tru­ly are.

As the nar­ra­tor walks through the scene, they begin to count the crows, each num­ber rep­re­sent­ing anoth­er group of lives lost—57, 82, 154. These num­bers are not just sta­tis­tics; they are stark reminders of the fragili­ty of exis­tence, under­scor­ing the vast­ness of the loss. With each num­ber, the emo­tion­al impact deep­ens, and the sig­nif­i­cance of these deaths grows. The thought of oth­er crows fly­ing above, pos­si­bly observ­ing the grim after­math of the hunt, makes the nar­ra­tor uneasy, lead­ing them to reflect on the nature of the birds. They remem­ber Dr. Cornell’s the­o­ry that crows mourn their dead, and this insight forces the nar­ra­tor to ask a dis­turb­ing ques­tion: Do these birds under­stand the vio­lence that has been wrought upon them? This ques­tion lingers, dark­en­ing the scene, as the nar­ra­tor grap­ples with the unset­tling idea that the crows may not just be pas­sive vic­tims but are capa­ble of mourn­ing and under­stand­ing their loss. The emo­tion­al weight of the scene is mag­ni­fied, not just by the act of the hunt, but by the thought that the crows them­selves may feel the full impact of their demise, adding a lay­er of grief and aware­ness to the oth­er­wise cold and detached vio­lence of the hunt.

The chap­ter con­tin­ues to explore the emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty of the scene, lay­er­ing feel­ings of fear, sor­row, and reflec­tion on death. The imagery of the dead crows becomes a med­i­ta­tion on mor­tal­i­ty itself—life being inter­rupt­ed by vio­lence in ways both phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal. The nar­ra­tor is remind­ed of oth­er lost lives, their thoughts drift­ing to the haunt­ing image of girls trapped in a crawl space. This con­nec­tion between the dead crows and the hid­den, unre­solved trau­ma of the past cre­ates a sense of per­ver­sion and unease, as the nar­ra­tor con­tem­plates the frag­ile nature of life. These thoughts draw a par­al­lel between the vis­i­ble vio­lence in the hunt and the hid­den vio­lence of past expe­ri­ences, mak­ing the read­er con­front uncom­fort­able truths about the way death and suf­fer­ing are inter­twined. The crows’ life­less bod­ies sym­bol­ize not just the end of indi­vid­ual lives but also the broad­er, more per­va­sive effects of vio­lence on the human psy­che and the envi­ron­ment. The chap­ter forces a con­fronta­tion with the often unseen con­se­quences of death, the way it rip­ples through life and alters the world in ways that can­not always be seen or under­stood.

In this moment, the dead crows are no longer just ani­mals caught in the cross­fire of a hunt. They become sym­bols of the larg­er human experience—death, loss, mourn­ing, and the con­se­quences of vio­lence. Through the imagery of the crows and their trag­ic end, the nar­ra­tor invites read­ers to reflect on the fragili­ty of life and the often invis­i­ble marks left by death. The haunt­ing visu­als of the birds scat­tered across the land­scape act as a grim reminder of how life is con­stant­ly inter­rupt­ed, whether through exter­nal vio­lence or inter­nal strug­gles. The chap­ter is not just a recount­ing of a hunt but a deep­er explo­ration of mor­tal­i­ty, the emo­tion­al scars left by trau­ma, and the com­plex ways in which indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties expe­ri­ence and process loss. The idea of mourn­ing, both by the crows and the nar­ra­tor, offers a poignant com­men­tary on the shared nature of grief, remind­ing read­ers that death, in its many forms, is some­thing every­one must con­front, whether direct­ly or through the lens of oth­ers’ suf­fer­ing. Through the reflec­tions of the nar­ra­tor, the chap­ter calls for a deep­er under­stand­ing of the impact of death—not just on the indi­vid­ual but on the broad­er web of exis­tence, cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful med­i­ta­tion on life’s tran­sience and the unset­tling real­i­ty of its fragili­ty.