Birds have long been used as symbols in literature to represent a variety of concepts, ideas, and themes. Their ability to fly high in the sky gives them an aura of freedom, hope, and transcendence. At the same time, their flightiness and migrations can symbolize instability, change, and unpredictability. Birds have been featured prominently in myths, legends, poems, plays, novels and more as versatile symbols that take on different meanings depending on the context.
Freedom and Transcendence
One of the most common symbolic meanings for birds is that of freedom. Because they can fly unimpeded through the sky, they are often seen as representing the human desire for freedom, unlimited imagination, and spiritual transcendence. The flight of birds can represent breaking free from physical or mental constraints.
In Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, birds are mentioned repeatedly as symbols of freedom for the protagonist who feels confined by her life and circumstances. For example, Bronte writes, “I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer.” This longing for freedom is represented by an imaginary bird in Jane’s mind that soars unchecked through the sky.
William Butler Yeats evokes birds as transcendent symbols in his poem “The Wild Swans at Coole”:
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.
The swans represent transcendence, beauty and imaginative freedom for the speaker. The bird symbolism reflects the romantic and mystical themes that characterize much of Yeats’s poetry.
Hope and Inspiration
The flight of birds has also long been associated with feelings of hope and inspiration. Because they soar high up in the sky, birds can represent aspirations, imagination, and desires that lift the human spirit.
In Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet”, a bird appears during an interaction between Marcellus and Horatio at the beginning of the drama:
Marcellus: Look, where it comes again!
Barnardo: In the same figure, like the king that’s dead.
Marcellus: Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
Horatio: Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
The appearance of the ghostly bird foreshadows the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost and the flight of the bird symbolizes the hopes Hamlet has to learn the cause of his father’s death.
Birds can also represent hope and inspiration through their seasonal migration patterns. Many species of birds fly vast distances every year across continents and oceans to find more hospitable environments. This epic journey inspires awe at the birds’ determination and persistence. For example, Shelley evokes bird migrations in his poem “To a Skylark” as symbols of tireless hope:
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert –
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
The skylark’s continual song, pouring out despite all obstacles, represents how hope endures. The bird’s migratory instincts become symbolic of how hope springs eternal.
Change and Transformation
Birds’ migrations also mean they represent change, transformation, and reinvention. Their annual journeys demonstrate a dramatic ability to adapt and find new homes.
In “To a Waterfowl” by William Cullen Bryant, a lone bird winging its way across a “waste of waters” becomes a metaphor for the narrator’s own spiritual journey:
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
The waterfowl’s ability to navigate to new terrain becomes symbolic of the narrator’s faith in being guided through personal transformations.
The epic migratory journeys birds undertake can represent self-discovery and growth. Their passage to new places represents the human capacity for change. In literature, when characters observe migratory birds or identify with them, it often foreshadows transformations they are about to undergo. The birds are harbingers of change.
Fragility and Impermanence
While birds represent transcendence and hope, their fragile bones and hollow anatomy also symbolize fragility, impermanence and mortality. Birds can suddenly die or disappear during migrations. Their sensitivity to changes in the natural world also underlines the precariousness of existence.
In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the narrator Benjy associates birds with death after the demise of his mother:
The bird that had cried down by the branch was still and on the gray fence the birds sat and fluffed out their feathers … I held my breath and I could hear them more than ever, they made so much noise. Then all of them stopped at once.
I breathed again. The street light shone on the bird’s wing. It made a little moon on the shining slate with my breath. The bird didn’t make a sound. Then all of a sudden I began to cry and turned to the wall
The sudden silence of the birds represents his mother’s abrupt absence and precipitates his grief. Birds symbolize the fragile line between presence and loss.
In Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an albatross that follows the ship becomes a victim of the mariner’s impulsive violence:
With my cross-bow
I shot the albatross.
The innocent bird’s meaningless death is symbolic of impermanence and mortality. The albatross represents how easily innocence, hope and life itself can be destroyed.
Unpredictability and Capriciousness
Since birds can fly away at any moment, never to return, they also symbolize unpredictability in literature. Their capricious movements mirror the fickleness of fate and circumstance.
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, birds are mentioned during a soliloquy where Macbeth broods about the meaninglessness of life:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The “tale told by an idiot” evokes the meaningless noise and chaos of bird cries. The
aimless winging of birds mirrors the pointlessness Macbeth sees in ambition.
In novels, the flightiness of birds also symbolizes inconstancy in relationships. Lovers who grow distant are portrayed gazing wistfully at migrating birds, which represent the capriciousness of romantic attachments. Birds signify the transitory, unpredictable nature of fate and fortune.
Imprisonment
Birds in cages or otherwise captive represent imprisonment, loss of freedom, and suppression of desires.
In Maya Angelou’s autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the title itself uses a caged bird as a metaphor for oppression:
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The caged bird represents Angelou’s own longing for liberation from racial and gender discrimination. Her memoir details her process of self-actualization despite living in an oppressive society.
Henrik Ibsen employs bird symbolism in a similar way in his play A Doll’s House. The main character, Nora, feels constrained by her marriage and domestic duties. Ibsen describes:
It was the first thing he gave me. I meant a great deal to me, this song. It was Finland folk song. All the birds come flying and perch on buried the wounded soldiers and sing for them, to lull them to death. I acted as if the bird were myself. I felt as if somehow I had been trapped too, just like they were.
The dead soldiers represent Nora’s own inner death and suppression of self in her marriage. The caged bird symbolizes her entrapment in domestic life.
Messengers Between Worlds
Birds can cross between different realms, acting as messengers between earth and sky, the mortal world and the divine. Their ability to fly gives them access to celestial realms, so they often represent communication with the spiritual or supernatural.
In ancient myths, birds conveyed messages from gods to humans. For example, common ravens named Hugin and Munin sit on the Norse god Odin’s shoulders and tell him news of the mortal world. Birds like doves and eagles link the heavenly and earthly planes.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a ghostly bird first alerts characters to the reappearance of the dead king. The bird represents a supernatural messenger, anticipating communication between the living and dead.
Birds demonstrate similar liminal roles later in the play when Hamlet encounters a trinity of birds:
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.
In rapid succession, the cloud transforms from camel, to weasel, to whale in Hamlet’s imagination. The shapeshifting, fleeting birds represent Hamlet’s own mercurial moods and mental states. But the birds also symbolize liminal forces connecting reality and imagination.
Prophets of Doom and Death
Birds, especially predatory and scavenging species, have symbolized death, doom and misfortune throughout history. Their cries, feathers and physical appearances evoke ill omens and mystical warnings.
In the epic poem Beowulf, a dark raven prophesizes ruin as it circles a battlefield:
The raven wheeled, starkly
Black his pinions, glided away, eager
To have his fill of doomed warriors’
Corpses.
The carrion bird represents how death and destruction feed cycles of violence.
In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Casca foretells Caesar’s assassination when he describes strange bird behavior:
Casca: A common slave—you know him well by sight—
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join’d, and yet his hand,
Not sensible of fire, remain’d unscorch’d.
Besides—I ha’ not since put up my sword—
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glared upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me: and there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,
Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noon-day upon the market-place,
Hooting and shrieking.
The unnatural behavior of the owl predicts civil unrest and regime change in Rome. Birds frequently assume the symbolic role of prophetic harbingers of death.
Harbingers of Spring
Birds also usher in spring, representing renewal, fertility and the awakening of new life.
In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To a Skylark”, birdsong evokes the regeneration of spring:
The blue sky bends over all,
The green earth sends her sap up small,
And these, thy guests, sing sweet and small
Their spring-time glee.
The bird’s chorus signals winter’s thaw and the rebirth of the seasons. The skylark’s presence conveys that warmth will soon return to the frozen land.
Folklore across many cultures celebrates the return of migratory birds like swallows, storks, and robins as a sign that spring has arrived. The birds represent nature’s renewal after winter’s dormancy.
In literature, birds are often the first signal to characters that the darkness of winter is over and rejuvenation is near. When birds reappear carrying twigs for nests and trilling mating calls, they embody creative forces and new possibilities.
Conclusion
In summary, diverse species of birds have assumed a wide array of symbolic meanings across time, cultures and literary contexts. Their flight inspires transcendence, hope and imagination. Migrations represent transformation and reinvention. But their fragility also signifies impermanence, while their unpredictability conveys capriciousness of fate. Captivity and caged birds symbolize oppression. And predatory birds evoke ominous warnings. But in the context of spring, birds assume redemptive symbolism, ushering in optimism and rebirth. Given birds’ myriad representations throughout literature, they emerge as one of the most versatile and polysemous symbols for human psychology and society. Their rich metaphorical significance will likely persist as long as they continue to fly through both skies and imaginations.
