Dorothy Parker and an Analysis of Her Short Stories Research Paper

Dorothy Parker and an Analysis of Her Short Stories - Research Paper Example She went through three marriages, including two with the same man. Most people say that her sharp wit was also a result of these marriages and suicidal attempts, which indulged her to take on alcohol as a soothing device. Nonetheless, this paper helps to provide an insight into three of her short stories, while comprehending how Parker has made use of wit and humour from her life, into those stories, in order to tell the world about the miseries of her marriages. She was also one of the founders of the Algonquin Round Table and wrote for Vanity Fair however, her wit proved to be too sarcastic for some of the producers. Initially however, her wit as a critic was extremely popular among the people because she told the truth in its rawest form making a number of producers and directors feel extremely uncomfortable for their less than average results in the box office. No wonder Parker was able to laugh at herself quite well too. Her stories are permanent proof of how she was witty about everything including her own personal life. For example, she had extreme ambivalent feelings about her Jewish background and she joked that in order to escape her name, she got married to a Wall Street stock broker by the name of Edwin Pond Parker II because of the anti-Semitic feelings that were prevalent in America, as well as around the world, at the time. All her stories have some or the other snippet taken from her life and this paper presents her married life in comic through her writing. (Meade, Marion) Through her worst years, Dorothy Parker always tried to maintain a very tough exterior for the world to see. This was probably because of a few reasons ranging from the already doomed image of women in the much talked about patriarchal society at the time, as well as maintaining her position as someone who had the best wit in the country at the time. She drank publicly in order to portray a sense of masculinity and to show that women could be tough as well. Parker often said, â€Å"Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.† (Parker, Dorothy) Despite her failed marriages, she scoffed at her own misery in public in order to show people that there were worse problems in life. â€Å"In subsequent successful volumes of poetry—Sunset Gun  (1928), Death and Taxes (1931), and  Not So Deep as a Well  (1936)—Parker poked fun at her own heartbreak, masochism, and hopefulness. Her most effective verse captures the breadth of her dreams and disappointments with bitter irony and perfect turns of phrase, but only hints at their depths.† (Itzkovitz, Daniel) One of Parker’s very famous short poems is about how she was reckless enough to drink and be with any man that she wanted to. For example, â€Å"I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I’m under the table, after four I’m under my host.† However, her stories still portray women in a much closed form where they are not able to speak up other than to their own thoughts. In all her stories discussed within this paper, Parker’s characters are only able to speak to the voices in their heads. (Walker, Nancy) ‘The Waltz’ written by Parker is one of her all time best satirical pieces in which a young woman’s thoughts get meddled up as she says yes to waltzing with a man. Her cynical side gets the best of her positivism and she grimly acknowledges both the voices in her head.