How do Parrot and Olivier initially regard each other? What are the major turning points that lead to their unlikely friendship? Why is their friendship possible only in America?Ĩ. In what ways does Olivier resemble Tocqueville? In what ways does Carey depart from the historical figure to create his own character?ħ. Olivier is loosely based on Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat and author of the classic Democracy in America. What does Olivier find to be the most appealing characteristics of America's fledgling democracy? What does he find most baffling?Ħ.
What are the pleasures of such writing? Where else in the novel does the writing reach this pitch of overflowing metaphor?ĥ. I ate her, drank her, boiled her, stroked her till she was like a lovely flapping fish and her hair was drenched and our eyes held and our skins slid off each other and we smelled like farm animals, seaweed, the tanneries upriver" (page 148). When Parrot and Mathilde make up after a fight, for example, Parrot writes that her "hands were dragging at my clothes and her upturned face was filled with cooey dove and tiger rage. Carey's prose style in Parrot and Olivier in America is vivid, richly metaphoric, and often extravagantly sensuous. What other instances of American greed does he observe? What is the irony of a French aristocrat being appalled by the greed given free rein by American democracy?Ĥ. As he arrives in America, Olivier remarks that "the coast of Connecticut was the most shocking monument to avarice one could have ever witnessed, its ancient forests gone, smashed down and carted off for profit" (page 144). In what ways are Parrot and Olivier uniquely positioned to represent the huge social changes that were sweeping across Europe and America during the late-18th and early-19th centuries?ģ. Why does Carey choose to let Parrot and Olivier narrate their own stories? What makes their narrative voices so distinctive and engaging? What would be lost if the novel were told from a single perspective or by an omniscient narrator?Ģ.
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