The Feather Thief

In The Feather Thief, Johnson explores multiple avenues of obsession. One such avenue is his own. Johnson becomes obsessed with the Tring heist in part because he is running from his own problems. He first became interested in the heist in 2011. At that time, he “felt trapped in a cage of [his] own creation” (7). While the Iraqi war was over, there were still thousands of Iraqi people stuck in their country. These Iraqi people helped the US during the war. Therefore, their compatriots deemed them as traitors. Despite their lives being at stake, the US government was slow to help their former allies. Johnson’s nonprofit, the List Project, was attempting to help Iraqi people flee Iraq and settle in the US. However, Johnson was facing several issues. The sheer number of Iraqi people who needed rescuing proved to be overwhelming. He also found it difficult to secure long-term funding. Johnson knew both issues would worsen with the war ending because the American public would no longer pay attention to the plight of its former allies. This meant that Congress would also turn a blind eye. He became obsessed with the Tring heist, partly as an escape from his own life.

The Victorian era obsession with collecting natural specimens represents another avenue. The elite were especially guilty of this obsession. One example is Lionel Walter Rothschild. He established a museum with his acquisitions, illustrating the sheer volume of his collection. Johnson notes, “The collectors he employed risked life and limb in the pursuit of new species: one had his arm bitten off by a leopard, another died of malaria in New Guinea, three from yellow fever in the Galápagos, and still others succumbed to dysentery and typhoid fever” (41). Collections of natural specimens served as status symbols. The rarer the natural specimens, the more status an individual had.

Another avenue of obsession that Johnson explores is the practice of the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. The fly-ties that follow this method are ornate, employing dozens of different bird feathers, many of them rare. These feathers were available to Victorian era practitioners, but they are difficult to obtain in modern times because many of the birds are protected by CITES. Despite this, modern-day salmon fly-tiers are obsessed with finding and using “real” bird feathers in their ties. Muzzy, one of Edwin’s first instructors, reiterated to Edwin and Anton the “magic of tying with ‘real’ feathers instead of substitutes like Turkey feathers” (72). There is now a sustainable fly-tying movement to counter this obsession with the real thing.

Johnson also explores Edwin’s obsession with fly-tying. Edwin becomes obsessed with this art form in his teenage years. It literally consumes most of his free time. Perhaps the strongest evidence of his obsession is that he intentionally breaks into the Tring to steal bird skins for both financial gains and to sustain his fly-tying hobby long-term.