Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot

The blue-front Amazon, another parrot in the pet store, ties into the narrator’s psychology. She primarily symbolizes the narrator’s longing for connection, especially when that longing involves his insecurities. For example, his feelings toward the blue Amazon show that his jealousy is indiscriminate—just as he was jealous over his wife, he was drawn to the blue Amazon but anticipated losing her to another bird: “[I]t wasn’t long before she nuzzled up to a cockatoo named Gordon and I knew she’d break my heart” (107). In light of the narrator’s chronic and fearful possessiveness, there is an element of unreliability in his narration. The blue Amazon may have “nuzzled up” to the other bird, but it’s just as likely that the narrator misinterpreted her basic geniality toward the cockatoo as an overture to a foregone courtship.

Therefore, while she symbolizes the narrator’s longing, the blue Amazon is also a device exposing how his descriptions of others say as much about him as about those he describes. This dynamic appears also in how the narrator characterizes her as “sweet” rather than physically alluring. The adjective reflects that his yearning for a mate is a yearning for interpersonal warmth. He also associates the blue Amazon’s plumage with the sky several times: “The sky is chalky blue today, blue like the brow of the blue-front Amazon who was on the perch next to me” (107).