Numbers

Question One:

The waltz is traditionally danced in a repeating pattern of 3; often the dance is taught by actually speaking aloud the numbers “1,2,3,” as seen in the popular movie The King and I. The pattern of the music never diverts from the set of 3, nor do the steps vary in length: everything is always the same number of parts. I think this speaks very much to the reason why Parker does not allow the narrator to stop waltzing; there is but one pattern, one option, and other options are simply unacceptable. Take, for instance, if the dancer were to try and do a step with four parts to music grouped in three parts- it would be possible, but would appear awkward and not acceptable as an appropriate choice for the waltz. In a sense, it was like when the narrator felt, “trapped in a trap in a trap,”(491) a trap also in three parts, in more ways than one. The first trap she is in is that of social custom. “Everyone else at the table had got up to dance, except him and me.” (491) All the other guests, which here symbolize the people of society in general, had chosen, or like her, had been forced, to join the “dance,” which symbolizes the modern lifestyle. Because of this, she being the last to be left not following lead, seems to have been left with no other option than to join the rest of society; her only other choice, “brooding over all my sorrows”(491) alone at the table, would have been choosing to ostracize herself from society. Within the trap of social custom she encounters the next trap, that of social expectation. She says to her partner after he missteps, “It didn’t hurt the least little bit. And anyway it was my fault. Really it was. Truly. Well, you’re just being sweet to say that. It really was all my fault.” (491) Not only is she expected to comply with social custom and join the dance, one in it she is in it she is expected to act a certain way, specifically as pleasing and praising to the man leading her. She denies the truth in order not to cause her partner any embarrassment, which is what society expects her to do; to degrade her abilities in order to ensure that the ability of the man accompanying her are not outshone by her own. She is expected, also, to have a sort of grace about her in doing so, which is why she calls her partner “sweet” to try and apologize, which she clearly is expected to not allow him to do. It is because of her presence in these two traps that she becomes victim to the third trap; that of intentionally continuing her presence therein. She lies to her partner about who committed the misstep, and thereafter continues to lie and say things such as, “It’s the loveliest waltz. Isn’t it? Oh, I think it’s lovely, too,” (492) and “Tired? I should say I’m not tired. I’d like to go on like this forever.” (493) She becomes so entangled in the lies she is forced to tell within the first two traps that she ends up trapping herself in the web further by continuing to tell lies about her true feelings even when she has the chance to leave the trap, to leave the dance. These, therefore, the web of lies, the trap within a trap within a trap, this set of threes, are why Parker does not and cannot allow her narrator to stop waltzing.

Question 3:

Ong’s most basic premise, “the roles imposed on the reader by a written or printed text are not imposed by spoken utterance,” (9) is largely important to the understanding of “The Waltz.” Parker is aware that this situation could have, and might have, actually occurred in real life, and been retold woman to woman by spoken word. In that sense, she attempts to make her writing sound as much like spoken word, writing to a fictionalized audience of women in whom she trusts to confide, in order to make the story funny. Ong points out that the author has to, ‘ write a book real people will buy and read,” (10) and while this is not so much a book as a short story, the same idea still applies; Parker writes for an audience she has imagined to actually exist by relating an incident that could have actually happened to that audience. The humor, therefore, is created by the authenticity of what she is relating; often people say other than what they are thinking. These fictionalized readers are, as Ong would say, Parker’s “companions in arms,” (14) who parker has, like Defoe, created, “author-reader intimacy,” (14) in other words, a special one-on-one connection between the two. Parker’s discrepancy between what she tells her fictionalized audience she really feels and what she actually tells her partner is what creates that intimacy; the audience is able to access some hidden knowledge though the feeling of one-to-one companionship that the partner cannot. This intimacy, therefore, this ability to share one thought and say another is what allows the humor to work in the piece. She communicates the truth, though humorously, within the boundaries of the social norms; she would never actually break from social expectation, but she sure will tell everyone what she’s thinking to make the social norm look as ridiculous as possible.