dorothy parker - commentary for her thoughtful laughter essay

Dorothy parker’s writing of “Here We Are” play begins with introducing the main characters, the unnamed characters of “he” and “she”. Tough it is unnamed, I could distinctively see that the character of “he” refers to the groom while “she” refers to the bride. They are traveling to New York City on train as the new husband/wife spouse that is having their honeymoon at a posh hotel. They are couple who has been married for exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes.
The play is a kind of comedy in which through the proposed conversation we can thoughtfully be refreshed by humor in it. But how this is showed in the play and its role to construct the meaning? To begin, I should tell that Parker’s main narrative device is conversation between characters. It often occupies perhaps ninety percent or more of the story (www.cosmoetica.com). It is as same as in the “Here We Are” play where it is almost a hundred percentage of conversation. Thus, we cannot find any issue of a play except from the conversation itself.
The first thing I have to deal here is about the character of the play. What I think about the newlyweds is that they are innocent and immature. The way they converse clearly describes their characters. At the route for their honeymoon, they seemingly have nothing to say. To break the ice, the groom nervously tries to initially start the conversation topic which results in discussion. But then they are trapped in a clumsy conversation which brings them to quarrel.
Another thing I have to deal is theme; it is all about the marriage and young love (www.heniford.net). It has been stated that their marriage is about in three hours. Not surprisingly if the bride may feel worried to the groom of being jealous and of thinking that he does not love to her family. Therefore, it is due to their immaturity and not-readiness to marriage, it brings to a dispute.
From those explanations above, I try to disentangle how this thoughtfully play becomes laughter. That the issue of marriage is the general issue to all people and it seems very common but when this simple issue is packaged attractively to construct the social reality is an extraordinary. Marriage is a relationship to unite two people with different perspective. Here in the play, we can see obviously the difference of both the groom and the bride. The former one feels that it is the time to enjoy the honeymoon but another seems unable yet to leave of her previous life.
However, because of their immaturity they didn’t find any deal of conversation. Every time the groom proposes a question, the bride replies in unwanted answer. In contrast, the groom always responds it in a wrong way. The conversation therefore widens to other topics that eventually make it becomes upside down and this lead to miscommunication between them. For instance, in the play we can see the failure of how the groom appreciates his wife’s veil and hat that makes the wife upset. Or another case in which the groom comments to how beautiful the bridesmaids Louise indeed he shows dislike to his bride’s sister Ellie. It makes the wife jealous; accusing her husband to love Louise. He cannot receive it and they thus accuse each other instead of having reconciliation.
This is a kind of reality that all people who are especially in relationship must have experienced it well. Sometimes, when we try to make a good thing our couple is not supposedly in a position to appreciate that. And whenever it apparently comes, conflict cannot be avoided even unfortunately it will branch off to other problems that cannot be overcome just like what have been showed in the play. This reality is what in my opinion which makes laughter.
Finally, this laughter is very contributive to the meaning construction of the text. Through their immature and innocent which place me as innocent too, I see how different male and female to view the world, male tends to ruin all the previous things and let embrace the future (in this case to enjoy the honeymoon) no matter what will happen but female differently is afraid to what will happen later. Other meaning of the text I can find is that male and female are different in the way they consider the things. Male tends to be honest to the reality although other people hate (for instance to appreciate the damned hat), but female want to have much attention to male. They are very sensitive person but lover, in contrast to male which tends to be tempered. These two differences are the most common differences I can see obviously in our daily life, whenever the differences come and resist each other there will be avoidable conflict such what has been showed in the play.


Reference
www.heniford.net/4321/index.php?
www.cosmoetica.com/B390-DES328.htm
www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/parker/bio.htm