New York to Detroit

D. Parker

The text under consideration is an abstract from a short-story by a famous

American writer D. Parker, who is famous for her witty and often acerbic
remarks.
“New York to Detroit” is a psychological short story, as it reveals the
dramatic end of the love affair between the protagonists – Jean and Jack.
This story belongs to the belles-letters functional style, the main aim of
which is to give the reader aesthetic pleasure, to make them think and to
entertain them by appealing to their emotions.
The text starts with an implication of foreknowledge. The usage of the
personal pronouns and the beginning of the conversation in the initial sentence
is suggestive of it. As it is just an abstract, so it cannot be said whether it has an
open- or closed-plot structure. The author employs names Jeanand Jack to
emphasize the commonplace situation.
The dialogue lasts for several minutes. But the time period covered in the
short story is longer – 3 weeks approximately. The temporal plane of the past is
found at the beginning, when Jean reproaches Jack for not writing. It is revealed
by the direct temporal markers 4 or 5 days, 3 weeks and past tenses you said it
would be…. The temporal plane of the future is found at the end of the text,
when Jack asks to write him tomorrow (perhaps it is evening already). It is
revealed by the direct temporal markers tomorrow, next week.
As the short story “New York to Detroit” presents a telephone
conversation. The main type of narration here is dialogue, which is interspersed
with 3 rd person narrative phrases referring to the character the cue belongs to.
The author chooses dialogue as an effective means of characterization of the
protagonists.
The autor depicts Jean as being head over heels in love with Jack, and it is
her who the reader’s sympathies are with. She is the one who makes a telephone
call. At the beginning of the short story Jean’s cues are much longer than Jack’s
and she often calls him by name, which makes explicit her desire to talk to him.
Her speech is abundant in emotive vocabulary. She makes use of interjections
Ah, Oh, words with emotive connotation e.g. adjectives wonderful, better - with
usual positive connotation; terrible, awful, crazy, silly, - with usual negative
connotation. The latter, combining with the word combination can’t stand,
verbs to cry, to hurt and adverb terribly mark the emotional state of the female
protagonist. The ample use of endearment in Jean’s speech (dear, sweetheart,
dearest, darling) becomes a characterological detail which reveals her
passionate feelings towards Jack. The authenticity of Jean’s speech is created
due to the lexico-grammatical peculiarities of the female speaker. Female
speech tends to be more emotional, hesitative and less certain from the point of
view of communication. All this is revealed by the excessive amount of
questions “Is this better? Now can you hear? / Aren’t you coming back?,”
requests “please, try to hear me”, use of grammatical structures, expressing
probability “I thought maybe you’d telephone”, uncertainty “it’s sort of better,
I’m afraid”.
On the contrary, Jack is portrayed as Jean’s opposite. His coldness and
absence of mutual feelings is expressed in the shorter cues, some of them even
consisting of 1 word hello? Who?, which imply his desire not to talk with her at
all. The absence of words of endearment in Jack’s speech and his avoiding
calling Jean by name imply his absolute indifference. Referring to gender
differences, males usually tend to use more strict phases and to avoid
probability and uncertainty. Accordingly, Jack prefers to use the imperative
constructions “Talk right into the what-you-call-it. Don’t talk so fast, will you?”
His blunt way of speaking sometimes sounds rude “I can’t hear one damn thing
you’re saying. Can’t you talk louder or something?” The use of vulgarisms
(damn, the damniest, lousiest) and colloquial, swearing expressions (working
like a fool, tired as the devil, for heaven’s sake, to shut up, to pipe down) is also
suggestive of gender differences, on the one hand, and becomes a
characterological detail, on the other. All these words imply that Jack is selfish
and rude. The length of cues of the communicants changes in the second half of
the short story – they become more or less equal, due to Jack’s talking to his
imaginary friends. Graphically, the cues not addressed to Jean are marked in
bold type.
As for narrative compositional forms, narration is used in the text.
Narration presents the unfolding of the plot.
The text under consideration is abundant in different lexico-stylistic
devices, peculiar to the dialogue as a type of narration. Dialogue reflects the
most typical features of everyday colloquial speech: short, clipped sentences
“Don’t you know? Say it”, elliptical sentences “Well. Well, for heaven’s sake.
Who?”; abundant use of interrogative sentences, shortened tense forms. One of
the most important lexico-stylistic devices in the short story is repetition, which
makes the speech more emotive, i.e. successive repetition “Say it. Say it. /
Please, please. Please, Jack, listen/ Oh, never mind. Never mind”. anaphoric
repetition, combined with parallel construction “Don’t you know what I’m
telling you? Don’t you know? Don’t you know? / You can’t do that. You can’t
leave me like this.”; epiphoric repetition “Aren’t you coming back? Please,
when are you coming back? / Can’t you talk louder, or something … I thought
you’d probably be out, or something”, ordinary repetition “It’s like years and
years”.
The title of the short story consists of 2 toponyms: New York and Detroit,
situated on the same latitude. Each American city is associated with each
protagonist: Jean is situated in New York, Jack – in Detroit. The preposition
“to”, meaning “direction”, implies the emotional appeal from Jean to Jack. The
desire of Jack to go on to Chicago emphasizes the growing gap, separating the
protagonists not only materially, but also virtually. The title correlates with the
author’s message: to show the distance between a man and a woman who once
were close.