Blackbirds (symbol)
Blackbirds are the ubiquitous symbol of the poem, the commonplace creature chosen to carry a vast array of meanings. At the most basic level, the blackbird is whatever we perceive it to be: it is an object that receives the various meanings that arise from the "ways of looking." At different times the blackbird represents fear, beauty, mystery, calm, life and death. As the sum of these contradictions across the poem, it is a symbol of nature's inherent ambivalences and uncertainties.
The glass coach (symbol)
The glass coach of the man in section XI is ornate and somewhat otherworldly, with fairy tale resonances. It signifies wealth, or perhaps overly sophisticated art or artifice, while also constituting a barrier: something that insulates the man from reality but through which he wants to still be able to look as an observer or tourist. The fear that "pierce[s]" this intended bubble of security is, fittingly, the shadow of his own carriage, the dark side of his sense of superiority.
Men of Haddam (allegory)
The "thin men of Haddam" in section VII are representatives of a type of poetic thinker whom Stevens views as too fanciful and idealistic, with their heads too far in the clouds. They spend all their time imagining "golden birds," missing the valuable inspirations available from the blackbirds at their feet or the women around them—the kind of everyday subjects that Stevens enthusiastically wrote about. These men could be lesser poets—the Modernists severely frowned on poetry that relied on old conventions of idealized, 'golden' beauty—or misguided readers. Either way, the poem urges us not to be like them, but rather to be open to the sights and surprises of the mundane world around us.
Motion (motif)
Motion is a crucial, recurring feature that allows the poem to take shape. Its importance is foregrounded in section I: "The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird." This first movement symbolizes the reader's poetic 'eye' as well as the blackbird's, giving us the motion necessary to launch the poem and explore the "thirteen ways of looking." It also nudges the reader to pay attention to the nuances of the blackbird's place within nature by highlighting the contrast between the animate biology of the bird and the motionless geology of the mountain.
Throughout, the blackbird is often defined most strikingly by its motion or lack thereof: its unrestrained whirling (III), or its threatening flight "to and fro" (VI) versus its homely walking among human feet (VII). Section XII asserts motion as an imperative—"The blackbird must be flying"—as if to predict the continuing motion and life cycle of the blackbird past the poem's end, or past our observations of it. However, in response, the poem concludes its own life cycle by changing from motion to stillness—"The blackbird sat / In the cedar-limbs" (XIII)—concluding the circle of motion initiated by the "eye" of section I.
Black and white (motif)
The contrast of the blackbird with a white, snowy background begins and ends the poem, and gives the bird much of its visual potency. The contrast in section I of the tiny black bird with "twenty snowy mountains" is striking, and suggests that the bird's dark color is significant not just as a symbol (of death, most likely), but also on a more immediate level as a literal dark object, something noticeable and distinct within nature. Emphasizing the color contrast helps urge the reader to consider the blackbird as a physical entity, and helps the blackbird maintain its strong visual presence in our mind's eye throughout even the more abstract stanzas.
Shadow (motif)
Shadows appear twice in the poem: the shadow and the blackbird's "indecipherable cause" in section VI, and the shadow of the man's glass coach in XI. Both times, they refer to the shadow of the blackbird(s), but also to something bigger: a general darkness or uncertainty. A shadow may be an apt metaphor for one of the blackbird's functions throughout the entire poem: like a shadow, the blackbird is a visual marker that is something visible in and of itself, but is also a signifier, a clue to something unseen. In this case, the blackbird / shadow signifies the unknown within nature: the uncertainty that underlies the poem and surfaces in sections II ("I was of three minds"), V ("I do not know which to prefer"), and VII ("I know, too, / That the blackbird is involved / In what I know"), among other places. Critic Helen Vendler likens the blackbird to the "shadow" in T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men"—"Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow"—an existential threat that permeates everything we do. Here, the blackbird is like a shadow that falls across the thirteen scenes, heightening the sense of realness but also doubt.
