“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” As Richard Puz writes, death and love are important themes that either influence one’s life in a negative or positive way. For Dorothy Parker, a writer in the roaring twenties, love and death were both negative aspects in her life. However, her love life, childhood filled with deaths, and her addiction to alcohol, all played a role in her literature. Two of her most famous poems that portray these themes are “One Perfect Rose” and “Resumé”, which were written in 1926. In “One Perfect Rose”, Dorothy describes a perfect rose hat her lover has sent. On the other hand, in “Resumé”, the speaker lists multiple ways of killing oneself. Not only are these poems based upon …show more content…
Throughout the twenties, everyone wanted money, cars and alcohol, explaining the materialistic views of the speaker in “One Perfect Rose”. “One Perfect Rose” and “Resumé”, poems that delineate the themes of materialism, love and suicide, were influenced by the time period Parker lived through and her personal life.
As mentioned, Dorothy Parker struggled to have a cheerful and joyous life and a successful love life, which impacted her writing. Beginning in her childhood, Parker experienced multiple deaths, including her mother, step-mother, uncle, brother, husband and father’s death. In 1917, four years after her father’s death, she married Edwin Parker, who as a result of his addiction to alcohol, influenced Parker into becoming an alcoholic as well. She divorced Edwin, and had a devastating relationship with Charles McArthur, who abandoned her and their child, resulting in her abortion. Feeling lonely and depressed, she attempted to commit suicide by slashing her wrists, which was her first out of three attempts. In 1934, she married Alan Campbell; however she divorced him in 1947 and remarried him in 1950. After Campbell’s death, she became a Socialist and pleaded the Fifth amendment against the House