Character Clues

Character Analysis

Actions

Parker uses action as a form of characterization surprisingly infrequently. Mainly, her characters talk. But, at the very beginning, we see the husband organizing the luggage in the train compartment, while trying to stay balanced. The narrator's voice chimes in:

Nevertheless, eight minutes for the settling of two suitcases and a hatbox is a long time. (2)

This makes one clear point about the husband's personality. He's avoiding something—he may even be the kind of guy who tries hard to avoid things if it's more comfortable. Parker stations this incident right at the beginning of the story to establish that there's some sort of problem—though we don't know what yet—and to indicate that attitude of one of the characters towards that problem.

Clothing

"Here We Are" doesn't actually use any descriptions of the character's clothing to portray information about them. It's not like, "The husband was dressed in a yellow bow-tie and a giant pair of duck waders" to indicate that he's some Wes Anderson-ian eccentric. That doesn't happen. But it does use an argument about clothing to establish features of the husband and wife's personalities. They get into a major argument after the husband responds to the wife's question, asking him whether he likes her hat or not:

"I know this is the new style and everything like that, and it's probably great. I don't know anything about things like that. Only I like the kind of a hat like that blue hat you had. Gee, I liked that hat."

"Oh, really?" she said. "Well, that's nice. That's lovely. The first thing you say to me, as soon as you get me off on a train away from my family and everything, is that you don't like my hat. The first thing you say to your wife is you think she has terrible taste in hats. That's nice, isn't it?" (48-49)

Of course, the husband didn't actually say he didn't like his wife's hat. That was more of an inference she made—and it might be an inaccurate one. At any rate, this exchange shows that the husband is either sort of thick, and doesn't really know how to handle these little domestic situations, or is compulsively honest and cannot just say, "Yeah, I like your hat."

Or—and this might be more likely—he just figured it wasn't a big deal. The wife, on the other hand, seems ready to see personal attacks hidden in the husband's comments, and suddenly seems to believe that she's married a nearly-evil man who hates her taste in hats out of spite. The quality and expense of the hat itself, however, is something of a side issue.

Family Life

When the husband says he didn't notice how her sister looked at the wedding, the wife accuses him of not liking her family. Her accusation rapidly gains intensity:

"I keep thinking, when we come back and get in the apartment and everything, it's going to be awfully hard for me that you won't want my own sister to come and see me. It's going to make it awfully hard for me that you won't ever want my family around. I know how you feel about my family. Don't think I haven't seen it. Only, if you don't ever want to see them, that's your loss. Not theirs. Don't flatter yourself!" (37)

Apparently, we're not supposed to take this that seriously. Aside from the wife's accusation, there's not really any serious evidence that the husband dislikes her family. He protests, saying that he really does like them—and there's no real reason to doubt him. In the story, family life is really a tool—it helps dredge out the character's attitudes: the husband's confusion and lack of awareness, and the wife's nervousness over the future of their marriage and sex life. 

Sex and Love

The wife—without overtly mentioning sex—expresses her anxieties about marriage. But her use of the tell-tale "I mean" shows that she's also really talking about sex (the characters say "I mean—" whenever they're dodging the subject of sexytimes):

"I know," she said. "But I just sort of got to thinking of them, all of them, all over everywhere, doing it all the time. At least, I mean—getting married, you know. And it's well, it's sort of such a big thing to do, it makes you feel queer. You think of them, all of them, all doing it just like it wasn't anything. And how does anybody know what's going to happen next?" (23)

This romantic and sexual uncertainty creates the entire conflict of the story. It gets right at the heart of what's making both characters so anxious—actually, what the wife is saying in the above quote is probably the closest the story gets to the truth, and to the characters becoming more aware of themselves and their issues.

Speech and Dialogue

We're gonna quote this again, because it might be the best piece of dialogue in the whole story:

"Well!" the young man said.

"Well!" she said.

"Well, here we are," he said.

"Here we are," she said. "Aren't we?"

"I should say we were," he said. "Eeyop. Here we are."

"Well!" she said. (5-10)

Doesn't that say it all? A "Well!" is worth a thousand words—unless those words are more "wells" in which case, well…

Speech and dialogue are, arguably, Parker's biggest and most important way of revealing character in "Here We Are," considering that the story is almost entirely comprised of speech and dialogue.

The characters have their thoughts and opinions—and those are important, too—but the quirks of speech, like repeating "Here we are" unnecessarily and saying "I mean" when they really mean sex, arguably give away equally crucial information about the characters, establishing their nervousness and their inability to communicate.

Thoughts and Opinions

Along with speech and dialogue, thoughts and opinions are Parker's standard tools for creating character. For instance, the wife's thoughts about all the bad marriages around the world help demonstrate this:

"And we won't ever fight any more, will we?" he said. 

"Oh, no," she said. "Not ever! I don't know what made me do like that. It all got so sort of funny, sort of like a nightmare, the way I got thinking of all those people getting married all the time; and so many of them, everything spoils on account of fighting and everything. I got all mixed up thinking about them. Oh, I don't want to be like them. But we won't be, will we?" (98-99)

By the end of the story, we can't say for sure if the husband and wife will end up locked in a marriage of ceaseless bickering—but it seems pretty likely. It's the underlying fear that runs through the wife's mind and helps condition her thoughts. The husband, on the other hand, seems much more optimistic—he thinks everything will be better once they consummate the marriage.