Imagine being an animal who was just bought by a person, only to be sold again to a different person. Then being sold to someone else. Imagine repeating this cycle over and over again. Imagine having no freedom, locked in a cage, forced everywhere against your will. You would crave freedom. Then, a nice human comes along and releases you. This is what happens to the cliff swallow in “Under the Rice Moon” by Rhiannon Puck. In this story, Rhiannon Puck uses the bird and the different characters to convey the theme that unselfishness will lead you to happiness. The theme is conveyed with all of the different people who traded the cliff swallow for something else. When the little girl at the beginning of the passage first buys the bird,
