The pigeons symbolize Terry Malloy, and the decisions he made throughout the film. The pigeon’s natural impulse is to fly, but they’ve been trained not to. Though he’s a tough former boxer, his excessive care for these birds indicates a special affinity between them. The imagery of him actually inside the cage himself, evident when he tends the birds, suggests this affinity as well. Malloy is a dreamer, a delicate and sensitive man. In many ways, Terry essentially is a pigeon—that is, he lives on the rooftops. We never once see him in his apartment. His home is the roof. Joey Doyle's murder, the first scene in the movie, is arranged by the mob, in response to Joey's plans to testify against his labor union. The mob uses Terry to lure Joey to an apartment roof, where Terry believes…show more content… As Terry is inside the pigeon coop, spreading feed, the investigator waits for him from across the roof. Terry eats a small portion of the seeds meant for the pigeons, affirming himself as one of them, then leaves the coops—escapes the cage—to speak with the investigator. Terry then leads the investigator back to the coop, and they begin their conversation with Terry inside his cage. Outside of the cage, the investigator says he remembers Terry losing a boxing match a few years prior. This specific incident is referenced again when Terry confronts his brother Charley about it, and it is revealed that the mob pressured Charley to persuade Terry to lose on purpose; the mob benefited from a fixed bet, but this loss cost Terry his fighting career. It is a fitting memory to recall while Terry is in a cage amongst pigeons. The investigator’s asks “Was it a hook or an uppercut punch that you threw?” (On the Waterfront) and Terry insists it wasn’t a hook; his reasoning “ I’m strictly a short puncher,” (On the Waterfront) but the symbolic reasoning is that pigeons don’t have