Purple Class Lab Day Feb. 2.
Answer this question after reading A Telephone Call by Dorothy Parker. You should respond directly here at Schoolsville; compose your response in a "saved" Word document and then copy and paste it to comment at Schoolsville.
Answer any one of these questions:
What characteristics of the woman-narrator do you learn from this interior monologue that you would not have learned using any other point of view? (at least three?)
or
How would you characterize the narrator? What is her chief quality/characteristic? Cite at least three specific items from the story.
posted by JTF @ 8:51 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
I would characterize the narrator as an overdramatic girl living in a time that was hard for women to have relationships with men. It might be because I cannot relate to being so stressed out over boys because the time period has changed and it is socially acceptable to call or text them, especially with social media, but I found “Alanna” really annoying. I could never picture anyone freaking out that much over a phone call. If she were my friend or daughter, I would probably send her to a psychologist. She is overanalyzing the situation and making up thoughts in her head to what has happened and why he isn’t calling. She needs to stop thinking about it so much and get on with her daily routine instead of sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. Examples of this include the whole page where she just begs God for this boy to call her. A second example is when she starts to think there might be something wrong and it’s possible that he may be injured and that’s the reason he’s not calling. She says he might be run over. The third and final example from the story is when she starts to second guess herself and wonder if the man actually said, “Call me at five, darling” instead of “I’ll call you at five, darling”. I just think all of these things are outrageous and that a girl should never be that concerned over a telephone call, despite the time period and her emotions.
I characterize the narrator as over-thinker. She is very worried about what this guy is doing and why he isn’t calling her. She over thinks everything that is happening. She comes up with all these possible scenarios as to why he hasn’t called her yet. Like maybe he is just busy, or maybe he just didn’t want to call right at five, maybe he told her to call him and he is worrying just as much as she is. All of these examples show how she is thinking really deep into the situation and is worrying too much about. She is also very dramatic. She over dramatizes the whole situation. An example of this is when she starts to count to five hundred by five but she says how even if the phone rings while she is counting she won’t stop. If she really wanted to talk to him that bad, she would answer the phone instead of continuing to count. She is taking the whole thing a little too far, when she could have just did something to keep her mind off of him instead of worrying about him.
The narrator of this story is a girl who is waiting at the phone for her “boyfriend” to call. I would characterize the narrator as being annoying and desperate. The girl is unsure of whether to call or keep waiting at the phone for him to call. He said that he would call her at five. But it is now past 7 and she is wondering if he forgot to or just didn’t want to call. She wishes for him to be dead, just so she doesn’t have to face the rejection if he does not want to call her on purpose. The narrator is annoying because she keeps thinking that if she counts to 500 by 5’s he will call. She repeats this ritual a few times and doesn’t get past 50. Her train of thought goes from one subject to another, and back again. The girl is worried that if she calls him she will seem desperate, which she is. She believes that if she calls he will hate her because boys do not like desperate girls. The third characteristic that I say the narrator possess is she is very self absorbed. In this story she only thinks about herself. The interior monologue story gives you insight into the thoughts of the narrator. By hearing the thoughts of this narrator you realize many characteristics about her, she is desperate, self absorbed, and annoying.
From this interior monologue you learn that the narrator is very narcissistic. Her focus is constantly on herself. She only thinks about why he isn’t calling her and prays to God for him to call. She’s also obsessive. She can’t even count to 500 by fives without stopping to relay the possibility of this boy calling her. It consumes her thoughts. She begins to sound more and more disconnected from reality and ultimately delusional as time goes on. She also has very high expectations, she never even considers the possibility that this “boyfriend” of hers may be using her, be a player, or ultimately not be interested. These qualities make her very human but also positive. She fails to see the potential negative qualities of this boy. She’s just focused on being with him and how “in love” she is. As a reader these traits of the woman-narrator come across as annoying but in actually, it would be a surprise if most people didn’t have thoughts similar to that of the narrators. Had this story been told from another point of view, the reader would not have viewed the characters the same way. The girl may not have come across as annoying because she would not vocalize her every thought. A view of the “boyfriend” may also have been different. It may have been discovered that he is a real jerk and that he wasn’t being as nice to this girl as she thought he was. Personalities would have come across differently and who knows maybe he did die?
First and foremost I would characterize the woman in this story to be very paranoid. The entire time she gets very anxious waiting for this call and obviously gets a lot more worked up than necessary. She counts the seconds that go by because she is so impatient. You can feel the sense of anxiety as she stares at the phone the minute the clock hits five. By the way she is acting I can also assume that she is very insecure. She worries if this man will call her because she so desperately wants him to love her again. In one part she claims that she will change and be sweet to him if he would just call her. She starts to reason with herself to try and ease her haste but nothing seems to really help. A third characteristic I can sense from reading her interior monologue is that she must be somewhat religious. The entire time she is informally praying to God begging him to let this man telephone her. At one point she even sort of tests God by claiming “You said you would do whatever was asked of you in his name. Oh, God, in the name of thine only beloved son, Jesus Christ, our lord, let him telephone me now.” She is constantly second guessing herself in this entire story. She must be sort of obsessive over this man.
The narrator of A Telephone Call starts off the monologue praying to God about a man calling her. She seems to start out as begging God to get him to call. As the story progress, she gets crazy over the telephone not ringing and asks many questions. “Couldn’t you ring? Ah, please, couldn’t you? You damned, ugly, shiny thing. It wouldn’t hurt you to ring, wouldn’t it?” Following these questions, the narrator begins to ask God if she did something wrong and starts saying she will kill herself and kill the man who is supposed to call her. This monologue seems to explain how psychotic a woman can get over waiting for a man to call her. “If he were dead, he would be mine. If he were dead, I would never think of now and the last few weeks… I wish he were dead. I wish he were dead, dead, dead.” The narrator’s chief quality is her ability to act crazy over a phone call. I feel that she would be described as insane and obsessed with this certain phone call. “ “Call me at five, darling.” I’m almost sure that’s what he said. God, don’t let me talk this way to myself. Make me know, please make me know.” Her obsession with this phone call makes her think about killing this man, makes her cry and makes her think about her pride. After reading this story, I think this woman should calm down about her crazy rampage over a telephone call.
I would characterize Alanna as annoying. The story was hard to follow because of the constant flow of her thoughts about this man who is supposed to “telephone” her. Alanna tries to do everything to keep her mind off of that phone call like counting to 500 by 5’s. She wonders if something happened to him or, even worse in her mind, that she did something wrong to make him not like her. He called her darling twice that means he likes her, right? This thought is playing through her mind the entire story and I think those words he said to her made her more paranoid. She wants to call him but she doesn’t want to seem desperate and during this time that usually was not acceptable. Her over-dramatic personality dominates the entire story and really makes annoying. The story ends with Alanna counting to 500 by 5’s again and we never find out if the man calls her or not. He was supposed to call at five o’clock and the story ends around seven o’clock. I think the man is not going to call…
In this story, the use of interior monologue helped me learn more about the character by showing me what she was thinking. If it were not in this point of view you would have just seen the outside demeanor of the women like when she wanted to unplug the phone and put it in the other room. You wouldn’t have known that she wanted to throw it against the wall. I learned that the woman was very desperate and needed approval from men to make herself feel better. It showed that the woman didn’t have any confidence and could convince herself of anything if she thought about it enough. It also showed that she is very dramatic and took small things to the next level. She likes things to always go her way and she is self-absorbed. The woman kept talking about God like she was really religious but then she said something about her not being religious in the past. She asked God to only give her this one thing when she had obviously not followed God in the past. Then, she blamed God for the guy not calling her.
The narrator in this story is very impatient. She is having an extremely hard time just waiting for a phone call. It almost seems like the first time she has ever been involved with a guy. Either way, she is basically torturing herself over this one thing. She cannot get her mind off of this phone call and is being stubborn about it. She could easily go and do something else to get her mind off the time as well as the awaiting call, but she does not. She pleads and begs with God a lot in this monologue, even though she knows he has no say in the matter in hand. Another thing she brings up more than once is counting to five hundred by fives. She says she will do this many times, but always stops before she even gets to one hundred. This just goes to show her impatience not only in waiting for the phone call, but she could not even get herself to count to five hundred the three or four times that she tried it. She also lies to herself a lot throughout the story. She tries to convince herself that time could just be slow, or that maybe the man is calling, but the phone service is not working. She tries to trick herself into believing these made-up facts to lessen the pain of her wait. She just needs to calm down, do something else, and wait for telephone to ring. There is no need to get all worked up about it.
The narrator of this story is slightly insane. She is obsessed with the boy she went out with a few times. Her chief characteristic is anxiety. She is anxious and impatient for the whole story about a phone call. She keeps counting to calm herself down, “Maybe if I counted to five hundred by fives, it might ring by that time. I’ll count slowly. I won’t cheat.” She is insane and has a hard time making decisions. She is crazy enough to wish the man dead, “I wish he were dead. That’s a terrible wish. That’s a lovely wish. If he were dead, he would be mine.” She sounds insane and extremely possessive of a man she barely knows. She’s very religious. She constantly asks God to make the phone ring, “You said You would do whatever was asked of You in His name. Oh, God, in the name of Thine only beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, let him telephone me now.” She really needs to calm down because obviously he isn’t going to call. She needs a reality check. She need to be medicated.
I would characterize Alanna as an annoying and very self conscious of herself. She is paranoid throughout the story because her boyfriend did not call her at five o’clock like he said he would. She tries to distract herself by counting to five hundred, but the thought of him keeps interrupting her and she begins to worry again. She wants to call him, but she is afraid of what he’ll think of her or that she may be bothering him. He had called her “darling” so Alanna believes that maybe he wouldn’t mind if he called him. Thoughts keep racing through her mind and she is stressing out over the fact that he hasn’t called yet. Alanna’s chief quality is that she is over-dramatic and doesn’t realize that he will call her when he gets the chance. In the story she is worried about him and wants to call him herself, but she doesn’t want to be a pain. She keeps praying to God to have him call, but later she curses to God because he hasn’t yet. She is too attached to him and it could be one of the reasons he hasn’t called her. I wonder if he will ever call her.
In the story, A Telephone Call, the narrator is going crazy while waiting for a phone call. One of the narrator’s chief characteristics is obsession. This is a chief characteristic because she is obsessed with getting a phone call. This is shown in the story when she begins to start talking to the phone and saying, “Couldn’t you ring? Ah, please couldn’t you?” Another way her obsession is shown in the story is when she begins to count by fives to five hundred. The narrator says in the story, “If he doesn’t telephone me, I’ll know God is angry with me. I’ll count to five hundred by fives, and if he hasn’t called me then, I will know God isn’t going to help me, ever again.” This quote proves that the narrator will find any “excuse” as to why she hasn’t gotten the phone call. A way that her obsession is shown is when she begins to wish that the guy she likes is dead. The narrator says, “I wish he were dead. That’s a terrible wish. That’s a lovely wish.” The quote reveals that the narrator is crazy and wants an excuse for why he hasn’t called her. In conclusion, the narrator is obsessed and crazy about getting the phone call.
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