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In The Passion, chicken represents the arbitrary and humiliating nature of passion. The historical novel’s first line reveals that famous French military leader and eventual emperor Napoleon Bonaparte has an overwhelming “passion for chicken.” Due to this passion, the French army assigns multiple soldiers and chefs to strangle chickens, prepare them, and bring them to Napoleon—and one of The Passion’s narrators, young soldier Henri, first meets Napoleon when Napoleon comes to inspect the army kitchen tent where his chickens are prepared. Later incidents reveal that Napoleon’s passion for chicken is both arbitrary and humiliating for him: arbitrary because Napoleon chooses to eat chicken even when guests of honor around him are sampling far rarer and more delicious dishes, and humiliating because Napoleon wants chicken so badly that he ends up trying to eat chickens whole with his bare hands—a fact that he tries and fails to hide from Henri.
The novel implicitly parallels Napoleon’s passion for chicken with Henri’s passion for Napoleon himself: Henri’s narration hints that his passion for Napoleon is arbitrary in that Henri simply wanted a cause to give meaning to his life and Napoleon happened to provide one. And Henri eventually finds his former passion for Napoleon humiliating when he realizes that Napoleon is a careless leader unworthy of devotion. The novel ties Henri’s rejection of Napoleon to chicken in a scene where Henri, having decided to desert the French army, comes upon his friend Patrick and the army sex worker Villanelle eating stolen chicken legs in the bare kitchen tent—showing that chicken, while an object of passion to Napoleon, is simply a normal and unremarkable food item to the vast majority of people. Thus, The Passion uses chicken to illustrate the unaccountable, strange, and humiliating nature of human passion.
Chicken Quotes in The Passion
The The Passion quotes below all refer to the symbol of Chicken. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 1: The Emperor
Quotes
It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock. What a kitchen that was, with birds in every state of undress[.]
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Chicken Symbol Timeline in The Passion
The timeline below shows where the symbol Chicken appears in The Passion. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1: The Emperor
Henri’s first job in the Napoleonic army is to strangle chickens for Napoleon’s meals. But, due to his short stature, he becomes the person to serve...
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...the kitchen tent when they hear bells ringing demandingly. One man rushes to roast a chicken, and Henri carries the chicken to Napoleon’s tent. Napoleon—looking fearful—tells Henri to deposit the chicken...
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...Henri jokes that Napoleon is using the Russian winter like a larder to keep his chicken from spoiling. In the future, people will discuss Napoleon’s actions as though arrogance or “bad...
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...the cook decides he’s too skinny to chop meat and assigns him to strangling Napoleon’s chickens. Later, Henri wanders to the docks and falls asleep. The recruiting officer kicks Henri awake,...
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...only speaks to Domino and a defrocked priest named Patrick. Otherwise, he learns about cooking chickens and waits for the arrival of Napoleon, whom he has hero-worshipped since childhood. The village...
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When Napoleon finally arrives in the Boulogne camp, a captain demands that Henri cook chickens. While Henri is spit-roasting the chickens, the captain rushes back. He says Napoleon wants to...
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...She offers to make Henri her attendant instead of Napoleon’s—“melon is so much sweeter than chicken,” she says. But Henri, who wants to stay with Napoleon, claims he can’t because he...
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Many banquets are held for the coronation. Though everyone else eats delicacies, Napoleon only eats chicken—and no one alludes to this fact. Paranoid about being poisoned, he starts making Henri taste...
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Part 3: The Zero Winter
...When the French army camps outside the burning city, Henri prepares Napoleon a very thin chicken and realizes that he has begun to hate Napoleon and wants to desert the army....
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...way, Henri has been at war for eight years and is still just cooking Napoleon’s chickens, so he feels that Domino’s sentiment is correct: “Future. Crossed out. That’s what war does.”...
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...sex worker (later revealed to be Villanelle). Both Patrick and the sex worker are eating chicken legs, which the sex worker explains she got by having sex with Russians. When Henri...
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