Like birds of prey, canaries, and especially those in song have a significant connotation. These delightful creatures are usually portrayed in tranquil settings and are a symbol of contentment. Coincidentally, Angela Vicario and Pádua both keep canaries, and on certain occasions the birds are heard singing, yet their owners are arguably far from content.
At first sight, Angela Vicario is fortunate to have the company of a singing canary. When the Chronicler meets with Angela Vicario twenty-three years after the murder of Santiago Nasar, he notices "a cage with a canary that didn't stop singing" hanging above her head (88). Her mother's attempts to make her "die in life" seemingly to no avail (89). In fact, many years of reflection have bestowed her with the maturity, good judgment and sense of humour she now answers the Chronicler's questions with. However, her countenance, "a woman half in mourning, with steel-rimmed glasses and yellowish gray hair" betrays the illusion of content, and even the Chronicler cannot bring himself to admit that "life might end up resembling bad literature so much" (88-89). In this scenario, the singing canaries give the fleeting illusion of complacency, an image that is quickly shattered when the Chronicler discovers the apparent anxiety that has found its way onto the once-beautiful Angela Vicario's face.
Pádua in Dom Casmurro masks his discontentment with life the same way Angela Vicario does, raising canaries to display the image of content:
He was particularly fond of birds. He had them of several species, colors, and sizes. The courtyard in the middle of the house was surrounded by cages with canaries in, and when they sang they made an infernal racket. He exchanged birds with other amateurs, bought some, and caught others in his own yard, setting traps for them. If they fell ill, he looked after them just as if they were human. (30)
Like Angela Vicario, Paduá and his caged birds are the image of pleasure. However, just as his birds on dependent on him, Paduá is highly dependent on the state. In fact, his place in the bureaucratic hierarchy is so fixed that promotion is near impossible, even after him becoming director temporarily. Neither is Paduá a wealthy man, he only owns his house because by a stroke of luck he won the lottery. Therefore, Paduá spends his days making do with imaginary compensations, raising birds, and pretending to be happy.
Like Paduá's fixed place in the bureaucratic hierarchy, José Dias also has little freedom of maneuver, his wearing starched and old-fashioned clothes being one debilitating habit. This encagement of his spirit results in his strong urge for liberation. Despite his status of being merely a dependent of the Santiago family, José Dias does not have the freedom to come and go as he please. This lack of freedom consummates in him never giving up the prospect of breaking free from his duties and embarking on an all-expense-paid trip to Europe.
The sympathy José Dias has for those who experience encagement is immense, which is most fitting as he sympathizes with Bento's sense of encagement by Dona Glória's promise:
Near the beach, large black birds were circling the air, flapping their wings or hovering, then coming down to dip their feet in the water, only to soar up and swoop down again. But neither the shadows in the sky nor the birds' fantastic dances took my mind away from my companion. (51)
The black birds described above are commonly associated with bad omens. Here Bento pays utmost attention to detail in his description since it embodies his anxiety towards going to the seminary, which seems like a cage to him. During his life in the seminary, he visualizes that "the flower of heaven would be freedom" (104). Upon hearing of his mother's possible death, "Filial piety fainted away for an instant, with the prospect of certain freedom, through the disappearance of the debt and the debtor" (127). This thought seems cold-blooded and cruel at first, but we must forgive Bento, for he was merely a child at that time, and he longed for the freedom to soar like a free bird.
When Bento finally marries his childhood sweetheart Capitu, José Dias, not giving up his inner desire to break free, compares the newlyweds to "birds brought up under the eaves of neighboring houses", together at last, and expresses his anticipation of their "chicks getting their wings and flying up into the sky, and the sky itself wider so as to make room for them" (180).
The Vicario brothers, like Bento, are encaged by their duties to fulfill a promise. Unlike Bento, whose encagement originates from his mother, the brothers are under the immense pressure of the entire society to avenge their sister's lost honour. However, for two seemingly bloodthirsty young men, they did have a peculiarly strong urge to be heard and stopped from committing the bloody crime. The Chronicler observed that the twins "had done much than could be imagined to have someone to stop them from killing him [Santiago Nasar], and they had failed" (49). Even after hearing the pair shouting threats for all to hear, Clotilde Armenta was "certain that the Vicario brothers were not as eager to carry out the sentence as to find someone who would do them the favor of stopping them" (57). The twins even made a point of telling Santiago Nasar's good friend Indalecio Pardo about their plan since they thought "he was just the right person to stop the crime without bringing any shame on them" (102). The duty that was put on their shoulders gave them no chance to retaliate, and just like their sister Angela wished to "free herself from that martyrdom", they did everything possible to free themselves from their grim commitment (38).
Angela was not the only one encaged by marriage. Subject to Bento's jealousy, Capitu "was like a bird out of its cage" whenever she and Bento went for an outing to the theatre (182). Sadly she was not able to control her own destiny as Angela did, for Bento abandoned her in Switzerland and refused to see her in the last years of her life. Unlike Angela, who became "lucid, overbearing, mistress of her own free will" in her sudden obsession with Bayardo San Román and "recognized no other authority than her own", Capitu did too break free from her marriage, but never did possess the freedom to make her own choices (93).
Humans often envy birds of flight, and with good reason to. Besides symbolizing aspirations to break free from encagement, images of birds also reveal unspoken character traits and relationships. One is certain to encounter a plethora of surprises by taking a closer look at the subtle relationships between bird imagery and character struggles. The struggle between one's own will and the pressures placed upon them by society is eternal, and bird imagery continues to embody that ordeal.
Word count: 1548 words.
Works Cited
García Márquez, Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. New York: Vintage, 2003.
Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria. Dom Casmurro. Trans. John Gledson. Oxford: Oxford UP,
1997.