Methuselah, the parrot who Brother Fowles kept during his time in Kilanga (and who later becomes a pet for the Price family), is a complicated symbol. At times, he symbolizes the captivity in which the Price women find themselves. Like the bird, they’re imprisoned: forbidden from learning, hunting, or joking by their harsh, tyrannical father. At the same time, Methuselah symbolizes the fate of the Congo itself: when Patrice Lumumba becomes the ruler of the country, Adah Price finds that Methuselah has gotten “free,” but also has been eaten by a predator. Similarly, Lumumba is also leading his country into an uncertain future—one that will include much tragedy.
Methuselah Quotes in The Poisonwood Bible
Set upon by the civet cat, the spy, the eye, the hunger of a superior need, Methuselah is free of his captivity at last. This is what he leaves to the world: gray and scarlet feathers strewn over the damp grass. Only this and nothing more, the tell-tale heart, tale of the carnivore. None of what he was taught in the house of the master. Only feathers, “without the ball of Hope inside. Feathers at last at last and no words at all.