Parrot in the Oven Essay
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Parrot in the oven essay
In the novel The Parrot in the Oven the author Victor Martinez talks about Manny Hernandez and his struggles. The struggles that he faces throughout the novel and while hes being a teenager are that he lives in a dysfunctional family, hes dealing with liking a girl and the drama that comes with it, and a father making him choose to work or keep going to school.
Manny lives in a dysfunctional family. Manny deals with fathers troubles like drinking and, his anger problems when hes drinking his life away. Mr. Hernandez is always at Ricos bar and getting drunk. Whens he at the bar hes always worrying the mom because hes an aggressive drunk. Manny also has to deal with his father trying to shoot his wife with his rifle. The father is always shooting down the family; for example, “he believed people were like money. If you were a million-dollar person, you had a grip on things, a big house maybe, and a crowd of suckers you could push around. You could be a thousand-dollar person or a hundred-dollar person even- a ten, five, or a one-dollar person. Below that, everybody was just nickels and dimes. To him we were pennies.”(25-26) That quote means that theirs the rich people that think their all powerful, then theres the middle class that has to work for their food and living paycheck to paycheck, and theres the people that Mr. Hernandez refers to his family as the poor people that has to live off of welfare checks, like his family. Manny felt like hes never going to get out of living off of welfare checks and he wants to get a job really bad.
While Manny is dealing with his father he also has to deal with liking girls and the drama it comes with. He starts to like his teacher named Miss. Van der Meer. Then after fantasizing about the teacher then he starts to like Mr. Giddens daughter. Nardo told Magda “Hey, do you know what? Mannys got the hots for Mr. Giddens daughter!”(119). It seemed like Nardo wanted to start drama because Manny liked a girl. While he was dealing with the girls he likes he also had to deal with the passing of his grandmother that brought hardship to the family. Also he dealt with his sisters miscarriage and her getting sick and taking her to the hospital. This made Manny more closer to his family and it made him really scared for magda.
At the beginning of the novel the author talks about how Manny and Nardo were working the chili fields. The father was talking to Manny about how Manny was going to school and was also working in the fields and he told him “why dont you give up school and work in the fields and start from the bottom and work your way up.”(45) This made Manny really mad because he doesnt want to end up like his father and he wants an education.
This novel that Victor Hernandez wrote shows us how Manny