How does the author use symbolism in the novel, Winter Counts?

Along with winter counts, birds represent the movement of time, and also a call to action. This symbolism is portrayed in the names of characters who move into Virgil’s life at various times. Rick Crow, who bullied Virgil in high school, regains significance to Virgil when he hears that Rick has been selling heroin on the reservation, thereby representing a threat to the community. Guv Yellowhawk is another unsavory character, a teacher with a reputation for sexually abusing his students, and he turns out to be involved in the drug network that causes major changes to Virgil’s life. Virgil also meets a woman named Charlene Two Crow at the end of the novel, who asks for his help retrieving her kidnapped granddaughter. In general, characters with bird-associated names mean for Virgil an incitement to action or unfinished business, whereas the dead birds that Virgil and Sybil put on their winter counts represent an event that has already passed: their mother’s death. In both cases, birds introduce past or future periods of time and are a reminder of what those different periods necessitate.