Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot

The narrator’s former wife is depicted largely through her interactions with the narrator in his parrot form. What little physical description of her is offered is filtered through the eyes of the parrot, who finds her attractive for two reasons: her protective, mothering qualities, which allow him to feel safe as a bird, and her parrot-like qualities, which he feels give her physical beauty. He describes her “nut-brown eyes” with a center “almost as dark as my own” (103), and her bird-like nose, which is “redeemed by the faint hook to it” (103).

As the narrator describes her, his former wife is inscrutable, a surface that he cannot penetrate. He follows her “glances” and “the movement of her eyes in public” (106) and guesses at her desires, and as he listens to her mention other men, his jealousy grows. He fears she is attracted to men who are strong, hairy, and who better fit macho stereotypes—such as the cowboy—to which he cannot compare.

Because of his consuming emotional dependence on his former wife, he sees her as the stronger one in their relationship and believes himself vulnerable, like “an egg” and “a chick” in relation to her, and this dependency angers him. Only when she appears naked before him toward the end of the story does his jealousy turn to tenderness; her nakedness comes across as vulnerability, which seems to him to invert the relationship’s power dynamic. Earlier, he sought to spy on her sexual activity, but when he finally looks upon her naked body, he finds her too exposed and wishes instead to protect her.

The meat packer appears early as the companion of the narrator’s former wife when she visits the pet store—and, as with all men in this story, he is less a full character than a device to inspire the narrator’s jealousy and anger. For example, he is simply called “the meat packer,” a name the narrator assigns him based on his appearance rather than on any real personhood.

The narrator always feared that his wife was drawn to such a physique: “A guy that looked like a meat packer, big in the chest and thick with hair, the kind of guy that I always sensed her eyes moving to when I was alive” (104). This individual seems more masculine and virile than the narrator ever felt himself to be. He circles the narrator’s former wife like a kind of cat, his animal masculinity signified by his hairiness. Because hair represents sexual potency, it relates to the narrator’s insecurity and his fears of his wife seeking out men who were “manlier” than himself: “I had a bare chest and I’d look for little black hairs on the sheets when I’d come home” (104). He fantasizes about biting the meat packer and taking off the tip of his finger, but never has the chance.

The “new guy” in shipping appears in the story only indirectly, in the narrator’s memories and as another object of his jealousy. Though the narrator’s wife mentioned this man only in passing, the narrator soon lost himself to full-fledged fantasies of her betrayal, deciding that she was having an affair with this co-worker because “[h]e’d been there a month in the shipping department and three times she’d mentioned him” (104). The narrator slipped into an incoherent rage, and he had to lock himself in the bathroom lest his wife witness the paroxysm.

In the scene with the meat packer, the narrator’s feelings of inadequacy are tied to the man’s sexuality and animality. With the new guy, whom the narrator never even laid eyes on, the feelings were of economic inadequacy. This man had the same car that had appeared in a commercial, and when the narrator’s wife commented on this fact, it sent the narrator into an ultimately fatal emotional spiral. Thus his feelings of inadequacy are fueled by a sense that he is neither animal enough (unlike the meat packer) nor prosperous enough (unlike the new guy). Both of these qualities were conventional markers of masculinity in late 20th-century American culture and remain so to this day.

The narrator’s fall to his death comes as he attempts to spy on the coworker from a tree branch; it is notable that while the man’s car is in the driveway, there is no mention of the narrator’s wife’s car being present.