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The Lady Reward Summary

Decent Essays

Afternoon is about the gentle days of old age, and the author tries to convey the message that we should enjoy the young and developing times that we have before it’s too late. The mood established by the poem is long and slow, gentle and calm, with actions being described as “comforted” or “Fragile”, and relaxed concepts like peace. This goes on until the last 2 stanzas, where the author admits their hopes for the days of old age to be further away to enjoy the younger times longer, hence the main point of the passage.

“The Lady’s Reward” is essentially a guide on how to allure men by faking yourself to be the perfect woman. The main point Dorothy Parker is trying to make is that this kind of false love would never make you truly happy. This is shown by the end of the passage, where the elegant tone of the text shifts to a less formal and rhetorical demeanor, stating “If that makes you happy, kid, you’ll be the first it ever did.” The parts leading up to that have a regal or feminine tone, indicated by words such as “serene”, “delicate”, “gay”, and the simile using cherry flowers.

The poem, “Résumé”, is about the inconveniences of suicide, and Dorothy Parker intends to tell that living is bad, but not nearly as bad as all the ways you could commit suicide, indicated by the final line of “might as well live”. The mood established in the poem is pessimistic, indicated by saying “might as well”, which shows unwillingness but acceptance of life, a concept that most anyone

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