The text under study is the last tea by Dorothy Parker. She is well-known for her humour and witty satire. The last tea is a story that is addressed to women and deals with 2 main topics: men’s attention and loneliness. This is a bitter story written in a cruel way. The story presents an interesting example of the indirect characterization. The author does not say directly that the girl is lonely but let her act and leaves the reader draw his own conclusion. The story begins with the description of the young man and the girl who are the main characters of the story.
There in not any preface of the story: we know nothing about the past of the people. The author shows the characters in a certain period of their lives. The plot is trivial and the characters are really true to life. The text is homogeneous. It’s almost consists of the characters’ dialogues, where you can find numerous words and phrases of informal style. E. g: « That’s good», «the poor boy», «poor sick thing»… Also interjection «Oh, Ah, goodness» introducing some of the passages which normally occurs in oral speech. The sentences have free and careless structures.
From the very beginning we come across a witty satire. Such stylistic device is used by the author to draw our attention and to make us commiserate to the girl. E. g. «The girl with the artificial camellia had been sitting for 40 minutes» But she said «I was late myself» «I haven’t been here more than a minute» She tries to be polite and to show the great care to the man E. g. «I’m ruined» he said. «Ah the poor boy» «Ah and you came way up here to meet me! You shouldn’t have done that».
I would have understood. Ah just think of it coming all the way up here when it’s so sick! She said. But the man begins talking about another woman Carol McCall. The man considered her to be perfect. He said «that’s what I call a girl». This part be be regarded as a climax of the story. Here the emotional tension reaches its highest degree. The girl throws out all her discontent, all her negative emotions which she accumulated towards another woman. The girl feels insulted when the man goes talking about Carol’s beauty, offers to go into moving pictures she starts vilifying her age, appearance, behavior in a social circle.
She said: «She is ages older than I’m». «I have heard people say she was sort of nice looking if she wouldn’t make up so much». Then the girl starts telling lie. E. g. He was a director who had all kinds of influence! – And he insisting that I ought to be in the movies. I used to just laugh at him. She can’t stop telling lie. The girl tried to escape from reality by using her imagination. She pretends to have a lit of dates and a boyfriend who doesn’t exist only to escape from the loneliness.
The basic theme runs through all the story is frustrated love and the lack of attention. Unconsciously comparing herself with Carol she achieves nothing but she doesn’t give up. She asked: «When will I see you again? » he answered: «I will call you up». She knows it is not true. At the end of the story the author underlines the idea of dissatisfaction, despair and loneliness. The massage of the story that we can pretend over and over, imagine what our life could be, but we should respect ourselves and be able to accept a refusal from the first time.
