Literary essay on Parrot In The Oven

Victor Martinez’s novel,” Parrot In The Oven” takes place in the hot climate of California, in Manny’s neighborhood. Manny lives a very hard life. His father is abusive, he gets bullied at school, and he longs to be respected by joining a gang. Manny soon realizes that being in a gang is not what he wants to do with his life. One lesson that we can all learn is that you need to follow your destiny.

From the very beginning, the author directs a lot of attention to the fact that Manny lives a hard life. Manny’s father is not aware that by showing violent behavior towards his family, he is being a bad influence to his children and essentially ruining their lives. As it says in the text, “He, Manny, wants to be the kind of guy people respect. But that’s not easy when your father is abusive.” This bit of information tells us that abuse affects people in more ways than one, for the rest of their lives. Manny also gets bullied at his school and in his neighborhood. In the text, it specifically states, “I’ll break your nose again boy, I’ll make that bump on your nose bigger, you will lose ten pounds just taking in my punches, said Stinky” This shows the hardships that Manny went through every day, and it all goes back to the hard life that he has at home because of his father. Manny always fails to stand up for himself, and that is because he is so used to not standing up to his father at home because he can’t. Manny truly has the definition of a hard- knock life!

Manny is so caught up in his own hard life that keeps getting worse by the day. One day, Manny’s father got out a rifle and attempted to shoot the mother.  A neighbor called the police, and the father had his rifle confiscated and was arrested. This must really ruin Manny’s life because he has to see his father get taken away to jail and that his mother, despite the abuse she has gone through, is upset that her husband is in jail. A clip from the text that shows how the mother is hurting, is on page sixty- seven,” After the police had gone, Mom sat on the couch a long time starring at the floor. I noticed that she didn’t appear tired, but more like the muscles needed to move her face were numb.” The mother was most likely depressed because she was trying to process the fact that her husband has been arrested.  Manny cannot understand why his mom is sad, but he still acts as if everything is okay. If he would have talked the issue out with his mother, he wouldn’t have made some of the bad decisions he made later in the story. Therefore, Manny is mostly to blame for  the those decisions.

By the middle of the story, the reader finally start to see the hard life that anyone who lives in the area that Manny lives has. Manny gets bullied at his school and in his neighborhood. Certainly it could be said that the teens are cruel because they have a complicated life themselves. While this is a good point, you still have to consider the fact that under no circumstances should a child have the right to bully another. A powerful example from the text on page one hundred nighty- three says, “I tried twisting my body around to get up, yet for every strain, Mondo pressed harder, shifting the weight of his knees to counter my thrusts.” This informs us how badly Manny is being hurt- at home and when he isn’t. No amount of abuse could motivate a teenager to be this cruel to another.

At the conclusion of the story, Stinky took Manny to the mall and they were shoplifting. Manny realizes that he doesn’t want to get in trouble and he leaves the gang and goes home. Parrot in the Oven had a happy ending with a valuable lesson. The lesson that a person can learn from this book is to follow your destiny. At the very end of the story when Manny finally came to his senses,  he made the right decision.  He didn’t want to get caught doing any more illegal things. Manny wanted to be respected in a good way, not in a way that makes people afraid of him. Martinez’s novel is very interesting and I would recommend this book to anyone who is going through a hard time or is having trouble finding themselves.