"Pigeon Feathers" is a short story by John Updike which was published as part of the collection, Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories. The story is semi-autobiographical and is partially-based on John Updike's teenage years in Pennsylvania. The first major theme of the story is growing up. The narrative can be categorized as a coming-of-age story. The story centers on a thirteen-year-old boy who moves to a farm with his parents and his grandmother, who is suffering from an illness.

The other prominent theme in the story is adaptation. The youthful protagonist initially dislikes being uprooted and being forced to move to a farmhouse. However, he gradually but reluctantly gets used to living in the rural area and to the life he has to lead in the farm. The age of the main character corresponds with the sudden change in his life. He is in a transitional phase of his youth—an age when he goes from boyhood to becoming a teenager. As he enters his teenage years, he is suddenly given more responsibilities. This is an important experience in his growth as a person.

Another major theme in the story is family bond. The story examines the protagonist's dynamics with his parents and ailing grandmother. As a boy becoming a teenager and experiencing natural changes in his view of the world, he has to balance these changes of the self with how he interacts with his family. The farmhouse becomes somewhat claustrophobic for the protagonist, but he eventually adapts to the lifestyle. This is compounded by the fact that the protagonist experiences anxiety whilst his parents continually argue about how to make use of the land.

The other major theme in the story is the main character's struggle to keep his faith in Christian beliefs, particularly regarding the afterlife and God's design of the universe. The main character reads the Bible and asks a Lutheran pastor questions about heaven, but neither provide the answers that he is looking for. In fact, the protagonist's anxiety stems from his worries about death and the afterlife. When he is forced to shoot pigeons in a barn that are causing a raucous, he learns the deeper meaning of death. In a sense, he sees his own reflection in the pigeons that he has killed.