28 pages • 56 minutes read
Robert Olen ButlerJealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Irony
One type of irony is when something happens that is contrary to what one hopes or expects. Among this story’s central ironies is that the main character is reincarnated in a form that corresponds to his past life’s failings: He failed to communicate with his wife, and now as a parrot, he has a limited vocabulary. Instead of an afterlife in which life’s problems are resolved (as many people hope or expect), the narrator returns to a world in which his problems are only exacerbated. This device extends to the question of how self-created the narrator’s problems are: There is irony in the idea of a self-made cage.
Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows more than the characters do in a story. In the case of “Jealous Husband,” the reader and the narrator are aligned in understanding what the narrator does and says. Thus, both the reader and narrator know more than the other characters, such as his former wife and her companions. This dramatic irony allows the reader to feel the narrator’s frustration along with him over the course of the story. Whenever the parrot speaks, the reader understands what is in his head, and they see and comprehend what his former wife does not. This allows readers to empathize with the narrator and to experience the kind of confinement that weighs on him.
Humor
Butler often uses tonal shifts for humorous effect and to stress the dramatic irony of the parrot’s situation. For example, when his former wife comes into the pet store, the parrot narrator says “Hello” to her, but his narration offers a sharp tonal contrast by following that with “what I’m really thinking is Holy shit. It’s you” (103). The rapid shift from the simplicity of the parrot’s voice to the vulgarity of the human thought creates humor and further juxtaposes what the narrator thinks and what he can say aloud.
Butler also uses puns and double meanings to emphasize dramatic irony, such as when the narrator attempts to insult his wife’s sexual partner by calling him “cracker” and by responding to his nakedness with the word “peanut.”
Figurative Language
Language is figurative when the words transcend their literal meanings. The layered signification typically enhances communication by making a statement more colorful or dynamic. While Butler’s story has its symbolism, the diction itself is rarely figurative beyond the occasional colloquialism (such as “heartbreak”). However, when figurative elements do appear, a telling pattern emerges: The narrator uses figurative language almost exclusively in the context of describing either his former wife or his feelings toward her. To emphasize his emotional fragility and dependence on her, he describes his old self as an “egg” and a “chick,” recalling that he wanted to “sit on her shoulder and fluff my feathers and lay my head against her neck” (106). To highlight the paranoia of his jealousy, he refers to the “ghosts” of other men that haunted their house. To convey the profundity of his former wife’s impact on him, he describes how she once made him “whole,” how her body was a “sky,” and how, when he sees her naked, her beauty “cries out” in its vulnerability.
By reserving such figurative language for the narrator’s former wife and his emotions toward her, the diction conveys that the relationship was (and is) extraordinary to him. The diction itself, therefore, characterizes the narrator’s consciousness: Just as words achieve deeper meaning through figurative language, the narrator finds unparalleled meaningfulness in his relationship with his former wife.
Related Titles
By Robert Olen Butler
