Jealous Husband Returns In Form Of A Parrot Summary

The Coward A coward, by definition, is a person who lacks courage, especially one who is shamefully unable to control his fear and so shrinks from danger or trouble. In the short story, “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot”, Robert Olen Butler makes the point that cowardly behavior can ultimately lead to ones demise through his use of plot, characterization, symbolism, and irony. In this story, Butler portrays a jealous husbands cowardly behavior when dealing with his supposedly cheating wife, which leads to his death. He then returns in the form of a parrot to endure the pain of his decisions. As demonstrated by the husband, who is the main character in this story, cowardly behavior can be caused by weaknesses as relatively common
Butler displays irony when the husband, in his parrot life, compares his lack of communication in his marriage to his absolute inability to say what he thought as a parrot. In his human life he bottled up his emotions and feelings but now that he is a parrot he has a lot to say but no words to express them. He sat in a cage, wanting desperately to speak his mind, and express his love to his wife, but he couldn’t. He made the thought-provoking statement, “I can never say what is in my heart to her. Never” (190). The effect of his cowardly behavior, by not saying what was in his heart in his human life, had made it even more impossible to communicate after he had fallen out of the tree and died. The husband states that “the crack in the shade was just out of view and I crawled on along till there was no limb left and I fell on my head” (188). The fact that he had fallen out of a tree and is reincarnated as a bird is also totally irony too. Butler could have reincarnate the husband as any animal and he chose a bird and birds don't fall out of