Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot

The idea of vulnerability is woven throughout the narrative, highlighting the narrator’s thematic struggle with communication. In his human life, his resistance to communication was a resistance to emotional vulnerability—and this aversion, in turn, underpins themes of alienation and leads to the character’s relational decay and both of his deaths. The narrator’s alienation from his wife was due partly to his fear of being fully seen, and he concealed his true thoughts and feelings. Moreover, vulnerability is often misconstrued as unmasculine, which only compounded the narrator’s desires to appear invulnerable.

Nakedness, because it symbolizes vulnerability, furnishes the motif. The central image of symbolic nakedness appears when the narrator’s former wife steps into the den after having sex with another man. She is naked before the narrator, but when he looks at her, he feels neither his former desire for her nor his usual jealousy of the man she is with. Instead, he feels protective: “she seems too naked. Plucked. I find that a sad thing” (107). He describes loving her more in that moment than he ever has before, and he wishes that he could pluck some of his own feathers and give them to her. The moment marks a turn in his character arc. When they were married, he always felt vulnerable and naked in front of her, even feeling powerless in their relationship. Now, seeing her nakedness and vulnerability allows him to love her selflessly.

Nakedness also symbolizes sexuality, but its deeper symbolism involves intimacy, which is antithetical to alienation. However, intimacy requires vulnerability—and as a parrot, the narrator can no longer make himself vulnerable because he cannot express himself. This deadlock compels his last flight.

Various ideals of masculinity, often stereotypical, punctuate the narrative. The motif is a key vehicle for themes of fear and alienation, as the narrator’s insecurity about his masculinity is an ever-present undercurrent in the story and propels the plot. While the narrator lived as a human, his conflicted relationship with his masculinity contributed to his alienation from himself and from his wife.

Feeling inadequate, the narrator feared that his wife must desire someone “manlier”—and this fear informs the narrator’s perceptions of every other man in the story, each of whom seems to fit neatly into his own stereotype of masculinity. The “meat packer” has brawn and animal sensuality, the “new guy in shipping” has financial potency, and the man with the rattlesnake boots appears strong and silent. One irony to the narrator’s envy is that he wishes he could communicate more fully with his wife yet fears she is drawn to men defined by their physicality rather than by their communicative ability. For example, in the bedroom, just out of sight, the man with the rattlesnake boots does not speak or use words when having sex with the narrator’s wife, but instead makes “a whooping sound” (106).