Humor In Dorothy Parker's The Waltz

452 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essays on censorship

Comedy is a phenomenal form of entertainment that consists of many elements that are made to make the audience laugh and snicker. Dorothy Parker’s short story, “The Waltz”, is a splendid exemplar of comedic literature. It contains many components of humor and never fails to wrench laughter from readers, but what makes this story so hysterically hilarious? One of the ingredients that made “The Waltz” so prominent in the world of satire is hyperboles. Parker uses exaggerations such as “And here I've been locked in his noxious embrace for the thirty five years thus waltz has lasted.” to convey how excruciating it was for the main character to dance with the maladroit man. Towards the end of the short story the woman elaborates on how prolonged the waltz was by stating “ And the music …show more content…

“Why, thank you so much. I’d adore to.” and ”I don't want to dance with him. I don't want to dance with anybody. ” shows that the woman in “ The Waltz” is attempting to be gracious towards the man, but in reality she detests the very thought of dancing with him. What she says and how she really feels contradict each other throughout the story which creates a comical effect. Whenever she speaks to the man, her thoughts express her agony and irritation regarding the situation she trapped herself in. Parker’s diction also shows how furious she feels which results in unspoken insults that only the audience can see. Innumerable people have been in predicaments where they desired to speak their mind, but they were prohibited from doing so due to some hindrance. For instance, if you had to be paired up with an unbearable person for a class project, you would not be able to switch partners since the teacher’s decision is final. Your partner keeps annoying you by tapping their pencil on their desk and kicking your leg, but you can not do anything so you have to resort to silencing them in your

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Nicole Krauss 'The Young Painters'

    1142 Words  | 3 Pages

    Upon the dancer’s departure, “the dancer, who though older was still languid and full of grace, reached out and tapped me with two fingers on the cheek, turned, and walked away” (185). Krauss uses this odd gesture by the dancer helps reinforce the strange quirks of the dancer and the author’s thought of the gesture containing “something condescending in it, even meant to humiliate” (185). The use of the words, “languid and full of grace” continues to strengthen the narrator’s fascination in the dancers beauty but also how the narrator feels uncomfortable with her interactions with the dancer. After the narrator’s encounter with the dancer, she walks by a crowded park “until a cry rang out, pained and terrified, an agonizing child’s cry that tore into[her] as if it were an appeal to [her] alone” (186). The author’s use of the painful and terrifying cry reintroduces the theme of a screaming child from the first passage which reinforces the author’s incapability to manager her guilt. The use of the word “agonizing” in this context suggests the overwhelming amount of guilt the author contains but in form as a youthful shrilling scream. Towards the end of the short story, the agonizing

    Read More

  • “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke

    527 Words  | 2 Pages

    However, neither the setting of the poem nor its events can be linked to the ballrooms where people dance waltz. The opening lines of the poem portray the narrator’s father as a drunken person “The whiskey on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy”. The dancer is anything but elegant, he doesn’t waltz gracefully but romps “until the pans/Slid from the kitchen shelf”. The poem is set in a family home, most likely in the kitchen. Thus, the narrator is trying to downplay the social connotati...

    Read More

  • The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, by Sherman Alexie

    1479 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the short stories “A Drug Called Tradition,” “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor,” and “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore” collected in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, author Sherman Alexie uses humor to reflect the life on the Spokane Reservation. In “A Drug Called Tradition,” the story starts with a joke by having Thomas sit down inside a refrigerator in response to Junior’s comment as to why the refrigerator is empty. The Indians are having a party hosted by Thomas, who gets a lot of money from a corporation for leasing some of his land. Alexie’s three second selves, Victor, Junior, and Thomas, later go to the Benjamin Lake and use the drug that Victor brings with him. In “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor,” Jimmy Many Horses, who suffers from terminal cancer, humorously describes his tumors to his wife, Norma, who cannot bear Jimmy’s humor and leaves him. At the end, Norma comes back to Jimmy because the person she lives with is too serious. In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” Victor and Adrian talk about the basketball stars on the reservation, hoping that someone on the reservation can resist alcohol and develop his or her basketball skills to be a successful ballplayer. The function of Alexie’s humor shifts throughout his stories. In “A Drug Called Tradition,” Alexie’s humor effectively accomplishes one of his goals by obliging readers to reconsider their concepts, while his humor helps his characters improve their situations in “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor.” In “The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn’t Flash Red Anymore,” humor mitigates the characters’ pain and despair. One common function hum...

    Read More

  • Examples Of Satire In Fahrenheit 451

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    While the tone may range from playful to angry, satire generally criticizes in order to make a change. Exaggeration, parody, reversal, and incongruity are satirical devices. Author’s use satirical devices to strengthen their central idea.

    Read More

  • Martha Graham The Day Dance

    734 Words  | 2 Pages

    Her goal was to move, not dance. She challenged the notions of what a quote on quote “female dancer” was and could do. Dance to her was an exploration, a celebration of life, and religious calling that required an absolute devotion (pg. 11, Freedman). She considered her dancers “acrobats of God”. An example of a dance which symbolized the “essentialized” body was Martha Graham’s Lamentation, choreographed in 1930, which served as an expression of what person’s grief, with Graham as the solo dancer in the piece. The costume, a tube-like stretchy piece of fabric, only allowed her face, hands, and feet to be seen, and, as Graham stated, “The garment that is worn is just a tube of material, but it is as though you were stretching inside your own skin.” In the beginning of the piece, she started out by sitting on a bench with her legs wide spread and arms held tight. Her head was going back and forth as if she was feeling sadness or maybe replaying thoughts in her head. By the way she was holding her hands so tight and close to her body, it symbolized the deep pain within her––the essence of her piece was grief, and she danced it from inside out. Russel Freedman, the author of Martha Graham A Dancers Life, stated, “She did not dance about grief, but sought “the thing itself”- the very embodiment of grief (p. 61).” Graham, dancing with strength and power, was encapsulated with her movement and was completely surrendered

    Read More

  • Turkeys In The Kitchen Analysis

    647 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Turkeys in the Kitchen,” an essay written by Dave Barry, humor is used as an aid to make a point about the usefulness of men after Women’s Liberation. “A Plague of Tics,” a personal narrative written by David Sedaris, uses a different kind of humor to explain the reasoning behind his behavior. Through these two essays and their author’s personal experiences, humor is presented as a device to captivate reader’s attention and declare the author’s intended meaning.

    Read More

  • Satire, Surrealism and Dark Humor in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle

    555 Words  | 2 Pages

    Satire is thrown into CC early and often, so much that it seems almost unfairly easy to extract examples, but it is such an integral component of the novel that it requires at least a look-see.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of My Papa's Waltz

    801 Words  | 2 Pages

    This means that the poem contains unstressed followed by stressed syllables. In addition, each line contains three-stressed syllable, which makes it trimeter. For instance, “The whiskey on your breath” (1) can be used to identify the stressed syllables in that line. The syllable for “whisk”, “on” and “breath” are the three stressed syllable within that line of the poem. The use of an iambic trimeter allows the poem to become the waltz itself as it matches the three beats of the waltz. While this meter is used throughout the poem, there are certain lines that contain disruptions to the meter of this poem. For example, “slide from the kitchen shelf”(6) which is a trochaic. A trochee is a meter pattern that involves a stressed syllable flowed by an unstressed syllable. In this case, “slide” is a stressed syllable, while “from” is unstressed. These disruptions in meter mirror the father’s “missing steps” in line 11. This dance between the father and son is not smooth, but rather rough and clumsy due to the father’s drunkenness. Similarly, the first stanza also includes a simile, “But I hung on like death” (3), which portrays a sense of seriousness in tone of the speaker. In other words, there is a sense of play but also a sense of danger that characterizes the

    Read More

  • Voltaire's Use Of Thoughtful Laughter In Literature

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    Thoughtful laughter is a technique used frequently in satirical pieces in literature. It allows for the audience to enjoy the wittiness of a work, later ponder on the meaning, and then apply the message to reality. Thoughtful laughter is often an inner experience that can only be achieved by authors who write meticulously. Two examples of satirical works in literature that display this concept explicitly are Voltaire’s Candide and C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Both authors explore the depths of satire and simultaneously deliver an important message to readers through skillful technique.

    Read More

  • Who Is The Antagonist In The Handmaid's Tale

    1583 Words  | 4 Pages

    discuss her secrets with others, but realizes that this will not be tolerated, as others will hear just what they have taught her to say. Incidentally, the narrator remains laden with guilt and frustration. Later in the novel, the narrator demonstrates her strength by standing up to her mother who represents the tradition that silences her. At this moment, the protagonist finally breaks through familial, cultural, and mental boundaries that have impressed hindrances on her from a young age as she listened to her mother’s stories and dissatisfaction with the conduct of family members. When the narrator breaks her silence, she becomes an independent person free from the overbearing burden of rules and expectations that were forced upon her because

    Read More

  • Being There by Jerzy Kosinski

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    Brown, Earl B., Jr. "Kosinski's Modern Proposal: The Problem of Satire in the Mid-Twentieth Century." Ebscohost. N.p., 1980. Web. Mar.-Apr. 2014.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Being Earnest By Oscar Wilde

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many aspects of the time period are made a mockery through puns and witty remarks from the

    Read More

  • Connotative Language In My Papa's Waltz

    265 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, connotative language is used to convey the poet’s attitude toward the “Waltz”. The emotions and associations attached to a word provide it with a connotative meaning; rather than the literal meaning, which is the denotation of a word. The waltz is known to be a graceful dance; but, the diction the poet uses to describe this event shows otherwise. First, the poet says how he “hung on” to his father; suggesting that he was fighting to continue their dance, rather than being able to do so effortlessly. In addition, it is also said that they “romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf”. The connotation behind the word romp implies a noisy and boisterous ruckus; the opposite of what

    Read More

  • The Sentiment, Mood, and Philosophy of The Best Slow Dancer

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Best Slow Dancer” portrays the mental state of a boy as he experiences a dance. It is a short dance, but one that seems to him prolonged for an eternity, the “three-second rule forever/ suspended”. The feelings that go through the youth’s soul range from extreme delight to just as extreme tension, and the reader may see them all exhibited in the lines of the poem. His surety when with the girl in his embrace is seen when his “countless feet light-footed sure to move as they wished wherever [they] might stagger without her”, but then he “tried…to tell her [he wasn’t] the worst one”, the worst of the boys, the one that she would not be seen dead with—which implies that he is fearful of the fact that she might reject him, “not waving a sister somebody else’s partner”. The full textual image demonstrates that the boy is with all his heart trying to impress the girl, and gets the dance with her against all odds of popularity and such, and then he treasures the experience, as he says to himself “remember” at the end.

    Read More

  • Anne Sexton’s Cinderella Story

    961 Words  | 2 Pages

    The tone of irony/sarcasm in Sexton’s “Cinderella” story can be observed in the repeating line of “That story.” The author uses particular phrases that sounds like she is criticizing the tale that anticipates the line. Another way that the tone can be understood is that the author is p...

    Read More

More about Humor In Dorothy Parker's The Waltz

Open Document