Birds Symbol Analysis

In The Line Becomes a River, birds symbolize freedom and thus come to feel like a threat to Cantú, whose job as a field agent in the United States Border Patrol is to enforce restrictions. Birds first enter the book when Cantú’s mother talks about their natural migration, before he goes to work for Border Patrol. As such, they’re immediately established as a counterpoint to Cantú’s anti-migratory work. Later, when he’s working as a patrol agent and the stresses of the job begin to eat away at him, Cantú visits a shooting range and impulsively shoots a small yellow bird. He then immediately worries about his sanity and tenderly buries the bird. This moment suggests that Cantú’s work has made him feel instinctively violent toward anything free or uncontrolled. Later, when he’s feeling trapped in his office doing intelligence work, Cantú watches a bird land on a surveillance tower in Arizona, relayed through one of the feeds he watches. The bird seems to taunt him, daring him to return to the desert, to the border itself, and to “inhabit the quiet chaos churning in [his] mind.” Here, the bird symbolizes the freedom to roam, which Cantú gave up when he took his job in intelligence.