Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot Analysis Insecurity and low self-confidence can be influential and very determining factors in shortening an individual’s life span; especially if you are an individual who is marry and has jealousy issues. In Robert Olen Butler’s short story “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot Analysis.” We can appreciate the perfect example of how trust issues and not been able to exercise strong communication skills can make you a coward, a miserable, and pathetic low life human being; having such characteristics will eventually deteriorate and liquidate your relationships with your loved ones. In this essay we will analyze the different elements that Robert Olen Butler uses in order to educate …show more content…
The plot of this short story is mainly about the insecurity and jealousy that the author feels when it comes to his wife. He believes that his wife is consecutively cheating on him with different man. The feeling of insecurity was shown before the husband came back to life as a form of a parrot. An example of his peculiar and obsessive insecurity can be found in paragraph (11-12) in the short story when he is led by his insecurity to impulsively look up the name and address of his wife supposedly lover. “But this guy from shipping. I found out his name and his address and it was one of her typical Saturday afternoons of vague shopping”. “So I went to his house, and his car that was just like the commercial was outside. Nobody was around in the neighborhood and there was this big tree in the back of the house going up to a second floor window that was making funny little sounds.” During the time that this man was alive, and time that he came back to life as a parrot, he failed miserably to communicate his wife his feelings and fears; therefore he could only made assumptions instead of just facing his wife and clarify the situation. In paragraph 19 he portraits his inability to exchange ideas with his beloved wife “I talk pretty well, but none of my words are adequate. I can’t make her understand.” The man is total loser, he is unable to express his emotions and ends up paying for his lack of courage
Tom is a very ambitious person when it comes to his work. He is caught up in getting a promotion from work by doing a project. Tom just focuses on the “big picture,” which is his future, rather than the “small picture,” which is what his wife is doing. This trait changes at the end when he decides to go to the movies with his wife. When the paper flew out the window for the second time, he realized that he can do the paper over again but he can never take back that one specific night he could have spent with his wife.
The character Mrs. Wright is portrayed as a kind and gentle woman. She is also described as her opinion not being of importance in the marriage. It is stated by Mr. Hale that “ I didn’t know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John” .(745) Her neighbor, Mrs. Hale, depicts her as “She─come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself─real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and─fluttery. How─she─did─change”. (752) It appears that Mrs. Wright is a kind and gentle woman, not capable of committing a murder. But, with the evidence provided and the description of Mr. Wright’s personality it can also be said that the audience will play on the sympathy card for Mrs. Wright. She appears to be caught in a domestic violence crime in which she is guilty of, but the audience will overlook the crime due to the nature of the circumstances. By using pathos it will create a feeling that Mrs. Wright was the one who was suffering in the marriage, and that she only did what she felt necessary at the
While staying at Mel’s home, the adolescent female narrator personifies the butterfly paperweight. The life cycle begins with the narrator “hearing” the butterfly sounds, and believing the butterfly is alive. The butterfly mirrors the narrator’s feelings of alienation and immobility amongst her ‘new family’ in America. She is convinced the butterfly is alive, although trapped inside thick glass (le 25). The thick glass mirrors the image of clear, still water. To the adolescent girl, the thick glass doesn’t stop the sounds of the butterfly from coming through; however, her father counteracts this with the idea of death, “…can’t do much for a dead butterfly” (le 31). In order to free the butterfly, the narrator throws the disk at a cabinet of glass animals, shattering the paperweight, as well as the glass animals. The shattering of the glass connects to the shattering of her being, and her experience in fragility. The idea of bringing the butterfly back to life was useless, as the motionless butterfly laid there “like someone expert at holding his breath or playing dead” (le 34). This sense of rebirth becomes ironic as the butterfly did not come back to life as either being reborn or as the manifestation of a ghostly spirit; instead its cyclic existence permeates through the narrator creating a transformative
In “All the Pretty Horses”, the author tries to elaborate on the human psychological cost of living based upon a persons dreams and romantic ideals. Throughout t...
People’s decisions can be majorly influenced by love and insanity. In “Prophyria’s Lover”, the speaker has to face his inner emotions of love towards his wife, which in the end lead to the murder of his own wife. The struggles of facing inner self has been a cause of the deaths of many people in the world. It can be the struggles of a single person alone, or can be struggles a person may have in which they take another persons life because of the relationship they have between one another.
At the beginning of the story the husband is telling of a blind man coming to visit him and his wife. The narrator?s wife had worked for the blind man at one point. Since then they have maintained a strong friendship and keep in touch with tapes. The narrator talks about not looking forward to the blind man?s visit.
The short story Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot, by Robert Olen Butler is a story about just what the title suggests. The husband that returns in the form of a bird died because of an accident he had while he was investigating a situation with his wife. He heard her mention the name of a new guy at work more than three times so he took it upon himself to look of the man’s address and go to spy on his house to see if his wife was cheating on him. When he got there he heard “funny little sounds” coming from a second floor window so he decided to climb a tree to investigate. He was out on a limb trying to peek through the window when he ran out of branch, and fell to the ground before he could see what was going on in the house. After his fatal fall from that branch, he returned to life but as a bird instead which is incredibly ironic. The story, Jealous Husband, is filled with irony, as almost every main point about the main character is ironic. The strong use of irony in this story is used by
Furthermore, is a summarization of the main points in “The Black Cat.” “The Black Cat” is about a man who always loved animals since he was little, but as he aged he started drinking. He then tortured his favorite pet cat, Pluto after he was getting annoyed with his presence. He goes as far as gouging out its eye before he hangs it in an old tree. Later on, his house burnt down and the outline of the cat was left on the only standing wall left by the fire. After he and his wife get a new home, they soon found a new cat that looked just like the old one except it had white around its neck. The narrator starts to believe that the cat is mocking him, so one day he tries to kill the cat but his wife interferes, and he ki...
The major part of the story was mostly about the guilt of the narrator. The story is about a mad man that after killing his companion for no reason hears a never-ending heartbeat and lets out his sense of guilty by shouting out his confession.
The couple in the story is a couple that has been together a long time and persevered through life together. When they first see the whooping cranes the husband says “they are rare, not many left” (196). This is the point in the story where the first connection between the couple and the cranes are made. The rarity of the cranes symbolizes the rarity of the couple’s relationship. Although they have started developing anomalies in their health, with the husband he “can’t smoke, can’t drink martinis, no coffee, no candy” (197) ¬—they are still able to laugh with each other and appreciate nature’s beauty. Their relationship is a true oddity; filled with lasting love. However this lasting love for whooping cranes has caused some problems for the species. The whooping cranes are “almost extinct”; this reveals a problem of the couple. The rare love that they have is almost extinct as well. The wife worries about her children because the “kids never write” (197). This reveals the communication gap between the two generations, as well as the different values between the generations. These different values are a factor into the extinction of true love.
The husband was also selfish in his actions. With good intentions, the wife had planned a surprise for him, but he was not pleased. “Instead, he was hotly embarrassed, and indignant at his wife for embarrassing him” (13). When the narrator describes the husband at the beginning, he has a “self-satisfied face” (3). Embarrassment is a result of feeling self-conscious. Because of his self-conscious nature, he assesses first how the few people in the restaurant will view him because of his wife’s actions. He does not prioritize appreciation for his wife’s effort and care, but rather sees the worst in her misguided actions. The husband’s selfishness causes him to be prideful, which in turn causes him to destroy his relationship with his wife through his actions.
The husband’s inability to trust his wife fuels his inability to communicate with his wife because he thinks that she will lie to him just like he suspects her of doing with other men. The husband’s jealousy fuels the mistrust between him and his wife to a point where he does not feel like he
The landlady is so obsessed with beauty, she lets Billy stay in the Bed and Breakfast for a cheap price of five and sixpence a night, including breakfast. She was terribly nice to him. Each thing was extremely cheap, so she could keep Billy there as long as she wanted to. One example of her manipulating him was ”The room itself, so far as he could see in the half-darkness, was filled with pleasant furniture. Animals were usually a good sign in a place like this.” What that factor is she's making the place look warm and welcoming. Therefore he stayed there because it felt like home. In the story, Billy says, “‘That parrot. You know something? It had me completely fooled when I first saw it. I could have sworn it was alive.’” Billy thought the stuffed parrot was alive because it looked so real, but it was real and stuffed. The landlady stuffed the parrot because of the beauty of it. The obsession of always having beautiful things caused her to kill the parrot and stuff it. One reason was that she lost her son, that made her lonely, which made her be obsessed with having beautiful things with her and never leave her side. She has already had killed and stuffed 2 other people, Christopher Mulholland and Gregory Temple. Christopher and Gregory resembled like Billy. Our beloved Billy was slaughtered and stuffed to be made into one of the Landlady's prized possessions of
Wright was described as a beautiful women filled with such joy and life until she married John Wright. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale feels sorry for her because her husband treated her so bad. Due to female bonding and sympathy, the two women, becoming detectives, finds the truth and hides it from the men. The play shows you that emotions can play a part in your judgement. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale felt sorry that Mrs. Wright had one to keep her company no kids and she was always left alone at home. “yes good; he didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debt. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters just to pass the time of day with him. Like a raw wind that goes to the bone. I should of think she would have wanted a bird. But what you suppose went with it?” Later on in the play the women find out what happens to the bird. The bird was killed the same way Mrs. Wright husband which leads to the motive of why he was killed. Mrs. Wright was just like the bird beautiful but caged no freedom not being able to live a life of her own. Always stuck in the shadows of her husband being told what to do and
"The exposure of women to physical and mental problems" is one of the important consequences of disturbing the tranquility in marital life, which has different forms. Depression has been one of these problems. In some cases, the severity of depression has led to a desire for death and thinking of suicide: Behaviors of my mother-in-law is so annoying that sometimes I say I wish I did not exist." Sometimes, I feel so bad which I am so eager to die. At a period that I so shattered I am just waiting for an opportunity to destroy myself " (29 years old, with 4 years of common life). Nervous weakness was another psychological problem: "My nerves has been very weak, I'm upset with the smallest words and behavior, now that I were not suchlike in the