Open City

Birds appear as an important symbol throughout the novel. Their migrations reflect the migrations of immigrants like Julius. In other words, birds symbolize human immigrants. On the first page of the novel, he notes how he “had fallen into the habit of watching bird migrations” (3). In Part 2, he notices a “flock of tiny birds—they might have been starlings” (174) while walking in Central Park. Starlings are another “invasive” species in the Americas, and one with a literary origin, since they are said to have been imported by a group of Victorian bird enthusiasts who wanted to populate the American landscape with every species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare.

The novel ends with a meditation on birds. Julius, on a boat touring around the Statue of Liberty, thinks about how some “birds [...] lost their bearings when faced with a single monumental flame” (258). These migrating birds are killed by a symbol of America’s purported openness to immigrants. This passage symbolizes how American freedom (the Statue of Liberty) comes at the cost of the lives of immigrants (the birds). Julius recalls statistics recorded in 1888 by Augustus Tassin, and “the sense persisted that something more troubling was at work” (259).