Parsley Hate Quotes

This moment in the poem could be seen in two ways, and both, paradoxically, would be true: on the one hand, we could note that Trujillo's method of killing is frighteningly arbitrary but, on the other hand, this can be seen as an example of how methodically hate-crimes work. It might seem arbitrary to kill people over a word, but in reality it's not; Trujillo chooses "parsley" for very specific reasons, and those reasons stem from an intense hatred of the Haitian people. Thinking about killing them makes him laugh, and if that's not evidence of a kind of insane hatred, we're not sure what would be.

This is a big quote for the one instance of the word "hated," and we think there's a good point buried in here – it has a lot to do with psychology. There is no real reason for the general to hate sweets; his mother happened to die while baking them but the candies certainly didn't cause her death. He could dislike them, or avoid them, and that might be normal. But Trujillo's abject hatred of sweets gives him a fullness of character that helps explain his hatred for the Haitians.

More hints at insanity, here, and while this isn't a poem about madness, there are little behavioral hints sprinkled here and there that imply that Trujillo is highly disturbed (besides the obvious, of course). The mere presence of pastries for the pet parrot set off an enormous chain reaction of thoughts in Trujillo's head. According to the poem, this train of thoughts eventually causes him to order the massacre after which the poem is named.