Bird imagery appears at many different points in the novel, a repeating motif of freedom and flight.

Brick is so fascinated by the birds he sees in Peterson Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America that he mistakes the falling bodies of Nella and her children for large birds flying past his window. His error is ironic: Nella’s suicidal and filicidal jump has freed her and her children from a life of pain and injustice.

Brick identifies with the birds he admires, and the novel increasingly links his character with birds in a more specific way. When Brick visits Rachel in the hospital and learns how to play her father Roger’s harmonica, Roger tells Brick that his ability to make music is bird-like: “’You hear how you’re making a song out of what’s just a whistle. Like a bird,’ the man said” (83). Later in the novel, Brick undergoes a migratory pattern, taking flight when he runs away from home and eventually taking flight again to return home.

The novel’s closing image is that of birds in flight. As Brick and Rachel talk in the park, he throws a coin into the lake and makes a wish, startling a group of birds.