Jealous Husband Returns In Form Of Parrot By Robert Olen Butler

1204 Words3 Pages

Out of all the birds in the Amazon, the parrot is possibly the most well-known because of its ability to mimic noises or words. Many people see this as intelligent speaking, but this is a common misconception. The author of the short story by Robert Olen Butler, "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot," had an interesting thought: to write a story in the perspective of a parrot. He imagined an entire story from the viewpoint of a bird that had come back from his first life as a loyal but jealous husband, to a newfound life a pet store copycat. Based on this unique point of view, the story is different from one told by a human being. This story's perspective is limited by the amount of words that the main protagonist can say because …show more content…

He started writing as a playwright for his major at the University of Iowa in 1969. After he graduated with his M.A., he was drafted into the armed forces to serve in Vietnam, his military experiences and memories pouring into most of his future works. Because of him being deployed in Vietnam, after coming back from war, his ability to communicate with others was diminished and a continual struggle for him. This can be seen as a connection to the story in the form of the parrot, while in reality it shows his true struggle in the real …show more content…

Even though the two are still married since the husband lives, but only as a bird, she believes that her husband is gone, and cannot see that the parrot is her late husband. With this constant irony, it forms a strange relationship between the two, where the husband recognizes that she is his wife, but she does not know that he is her husband. In his life as a human, the protagonist was constantly jealous of whomever of the male species that his wife had a friendship with. One particular incident was with a man that worked at the same job as his wife as a shipping man. The husband, although only hearing about this man three times brought up in casual conversation, locked himself in his closet because he did not want to say something to his wife that would make her realize his jealousy. After calming down, he went to the shipping man's house and stalked him, to the point that he climbed a tree just to get a better look at him. This was to no avail, as he fell from the tree and died. Because of his selfish tendencies, it is easy to see that the husband is jealous of his wife and believes that she is cheating on him with the said man from shipping, although this suspicion is not

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