Theme Reflection: Why live? It's just too inconvenient to consider other options...

Like Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, Dorothy Parker's poem "Resumé" subverts the expectations of the reader by making light of a serious topic. In her poem, she begins by listing the discomfort caused by various tools of suicide; for example, "rivers are damp," and "gas smells awful." When she concludes her poem with "you might as well live," she sounds flippant, but rather is commenting on something quite serious. According to Dr. Alex Lickerman in his article "6 Reasons Why People Commit Suicide," the number one reason cited is depression. He says that "the pain of existence often becomes too much for severely depressed people to bear," which is precisely what Parker targets in her poem. Interestingly, the poem's title "Resumé" underscores the poignancy of the message. Are we to assume that speaker of the poem has tried all of these? Is the speaker experienced in precise way that each of these tools of suicide feel? Certainly, as a society, we should not joke about suicide. But rather than making suicide a joke, Parker heightens the gravity of the subject with the litote "you might as well live," a figure of speech that uses understatement to render an ironical effect, namely emphasizing what she understates. By understating the discomfort that razors, acids, drugs, guns and nooses cause with the off-hand construction of this last line, Parker appeals to a cool and detached sense of logic in encouraging people to forego those attempts and try to bear the pain of living.