Parrots

Ginger is the parrot at the center of the conflict between James A. Harrison and Emily Harrison. A keepsake from James’s dying sailor brother, Ginger repeats profanity without, in James’s view, understanding its meaning. His presence turns an existing pattern of marital bickering into a crisis: after the bird disrupts a ministers’ tea, Emily leaves James unless he gives it up. The parrot is both a beloved inheritance and the immediate point on which their estrangement breaks open.

Identity and Attachment

James is attached to Ginger because the bird came from his brother, who sent it to him while dying. James remembers that brother as a childhood favorite, so Ginger carries a personal connection that makes surrendering the animal feel like more than removing an annoyance from the household. The parrot’s importance is therefore not simply its behavior: it is bound to James’s memory of family affection.

Ginger’s defining behavior is repeating profane words. James distinguishes this imitation from human profanity, reasoning that a parrot repeats what it has heard without understanding it. He therefore thinks the bird’s language can be excused, even though he says he hates profanity in a person. This judgment is James’s own defense of Ginger, not an indication that the parrot’s speech is harmless to everyone in the household.

Conflict in the Harrison Household

Emily dislikes parrots and cannot tolerate Ginger’s speech. She tries to stop him swearing, just as she tries to correct James’s grammar and manners; James observes that neither effort succeeds, and that the more they are pressed, the worse the behavior seems to become. The parallel makes Ginger part of a wider domestic struggle: Emily’s attempts to reform both husband and bird meet James’s resistance, while he admits that his own crankiness and refusal to improve helped sustain their quarrels.

The decisive confrontation comes at a tea attended by two ministers and their wives. James has promised to put Ginger somewhere safe so the guests will not hear him, but, distracted by Emily’s concerns about clean collars and grammar, he forgets. Ginger is outside the dining-room window when a gobbler comes into view in the yard, a sight that reliably affects the parrot. He raises his voice while one of the ministers is saying grace and, as James recounts it, surpasses himself. James carries him to the barn; he is mortified too, and does not enjoy the rest of the meal.

Separation and Aftermath

After the guests leave, James thinks about Emily’s hurt and about whether the ministers might assume that Ginger learned his vocabulary from him. He decides that the parrot must be disposed of and goes to tell Emily. Instead, he finds a letter: she has returned to her own house and will stay there until James tells her he has got rid of Ginger. James refuses, declaring in effect that he will not part with the bird, and sends Emily’s belongings after her. The dispute becomes public talk, and James says that the separation leaves him cross and cantankerous enough to decide he must leave as well.

The bird’s role in the rupture is substantial but not isolated from the couple’s prior conflict. James describes their marriage as already worn down by mutual fault-finding; Ginger is the final point of contention, not the origin of every grievance. The resolution also arrives through a change in the situation rather than a recorded surrender of the parrot: when James returns from the back field on Saturday, Emily is at his house, scrubbing the floor, with a decent dinner ready. His account presents the bird as the focus of an ultimatum and a lasting attachment, while the couple’s return to shared domestic life complicates the apparent finality of their separation.

Narrative Significance

Ginger’s speech makes a private disagreement audible to visitors, converting a household irritation into public embarrassment. The gobbler’s appearance provides the immediate trigger for the outburst, while James’s forgotten promise allows the moment to expose how completely the couple’s quarrels have crowded his attention. The parrot is thus not merely a comic interruption: as a treasured link to James’s brother, he tests the limits of Emily’s authority in the home and of James’s willingness to yield. James tells the story retrospectively to Anne, acknowledging his own part in the marital friction even as he defends his attachment to Ginger.