Literary Devices in Here We Are
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Back in the day, people used to ride trains. We mean, they still do—subways, and commuter rails, and Amtrak. But it was different back in olden times. Trains were romantic. They were both public...
Narrator Point of View
Parker doesn't really go into her characters' heads—the story is almost entirely comprised of dialogue, except for the beginning paragraphs and the occasional stray sentence. Parker does make a s...
Genre
"Here We Are" is a pretty funny story, but it's not exactly comedy, because in the classic definition of the term a comedy needs to have a happy ending. And these newlyweds aren't exactly happy by...
Tone
In "Here We Are" Dorothy Parker isn't out to chop anyone's head off or unveil the inner workings of the cosmos: she's poking fun at human foibles and finding the comedy inherent in any failure to c...
Writing Style
Parker's story is mainly composed of dialogue. Her two characters don't talk in Shakespearean soliloquies, but with the accents and quirks of 1920s and 1930s American English:"Well!" the young man...
What's Up With the Title?
The title comes straight from dialogue in the story—repeated both at the beginning and the end. After the husband says, "Here we are" the wife replies:"Yes, here we are," she said. "Aren't we?" (...
What's Up With the Ending?
We end up where we started—with the wife repeating her line from the beginning of the story: "Yes, here we are […] Aren't we?" (113)The repetition might imply that their squabbling is goin...
Tough-o-Meter
Aside from getting the basic point of this story (psst, they're secretly both thinking about sex)—which is probably pretty easy—"Here We Are" is a really easy, straightforward read. Here, we'll...
Plot Analysis
Love and Luggage There's a smidgen of exposition at the beginning before we get into the real substance of the story. Of course, the story is just two people talking, so it feels kind of exposition...
Trivia
When Parker died in 1967, she left her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. (It was inherited by the NAACP after King was assassinated. (Source)No less a literary luminary than F. Scott Fitzgerald once...
Steaminess Rating
So, "Here We Are" is all about sex—but it's not some sort of near-pornographic Fifty Shades of Grey¬-style short story. In fact there are no overt references to sex at all. Really, the sexual co...
Allusions
The Biltmore Hotel