Andrew Lam
Professor Singer
Expository Writing 201
9 October 2015
Hazel Morse and Alcohol Alcohol is portrayed as a social lubricant in that it brings people together: it loosens people up and makes them more sociable. It can transform the quietest and reserved person into an open and outgoing one. Alcohol can also be used to escape life and all its problems for a little while. Although alcohol can enhance a person’s social performance and help escape reality, indulging too much in alcohol can have its negative effects. Too much alcohol can lead to dependence on the substance, which creates an addiction. An addiction is something, be it a substance or an activity, which gives a person pleasure and an escape from the world momentarily, but that something is used or done so often that it interrupts and interferes with a person’s life. Dorothy Parker’s “Big Blonde” reveals the life of Hazel Morse whose life filled with laughter and men turned into a life addicted to alcohol to cope with despair. From the beginning of the short story, Hazel Morse’s life was easy-going on the surface: “Her job [as a model] was not onerous, and she met numbers of men and spent numbers of evenings with them, laughing at their jokes and telling them she loved their neckties” (132). Unfortunately, Hazel Morse falls into a trap of trying to satisfy the desires of shallow men by being a good sport. She puts up a front to make men like her because “popularity seemed to her to be worth all the work that had to be put into its achievement” (132). However, she “realized how tired she was” (133) from being a good sport so she married Herbie, a man promptly drawn to her the moment they met. A marriage was everything she longed for because “it was a delight, a new game, a holiday, to give up being a good sport” (133). She was able to escape the struggles of putting on the façade of a good sport and she could finally begin a peaceful life. However, the marriage was not what Hazel Morse hoped it would be. “First they [Herbie and Hazel] were lovers; and then, it seemed without transition, they were enemies. She never understood” (134). Hazel Morse never realized that Herbie married her because she was a good sport: he liked that she was fun and laughed at all his jokes. But when she slowly abandoned that good sport façade, Herbie lost interest in her and began to go out drinking on his own to find excitement and laughter. Hazel Morse became distressed that she and Herbie were fighting constantly and that Herbie would consistently leave her for long periods of time. To reconnect with her husband, Hazel Morse begins to drink even though “she had never needed to drink, formerly” (136). “They [Herbie and Hazel] both felt it might restore her high spirits, and their good times together might again be possible” (136). The first couple of drinks did bring Herbie and Hazel Morse closer: they were able to loosen up and become happy, but as they consumed more alcohol, they began to fight. This was the start, unbeknownst to Hazel, of her alcohol addiction because she could never recall the day she began drinking. Her marriage did not get better with alcohol because Herbie would still leave her for days to drink. But “somewhere in her head or heart was the lazy, nebulous hope that things would change and she and Herbie settle suddenly into soothing married life” (137). This naïve thought and loneliness caused Hazel Morse to commence drinking alone, “little short drinks all through the day” (137). Hazel has used alcohol to escape from reality: she used alcohol to numb the pain caused by her marriage. To continue the addiction, Hazel Morse began to drink with Mrs. Martin and “The Boys” from across the hall. The alcohol transformed Hazel Morse into a sociable person again because she “became lively and good-natured and audacious” (137). The alcohol helped Hazel Morse become the good sport that she was before her marriage. She would “drink enough to cloud her most recent battle with Herbie” (138) and with that “The Boys” approved of her and she quickly became popular. Hazel Morse is now dependent on alcohol to cope with her struggling marriage and to impress “The Boys.” Instead of confronting the issue, she wants to live out her days in a haze by drinking and live her nights as a good sport that she once was by drinking even more. After Herbie left her, Hazel Morse drank to keep “her mind from racing around him. Whiskey slowed it for her She was almost peaceful, in her mist” (140). This caused Hazel Morse to spiral into despair and left her with one way to cope with it: alcohol. Hazel Morse reverts to sublimating her own self to play the good sport, hoping that it would help her find another man. After Herbie, she gets into a poker group and takes on many lovers. Her life is continually in a haze because “she never recalled how men entered her life and left it. There was no surprises. She had no thrill at their advent, nor woe at their departure” (143). At this point, Hazel Morse’s life has been consumed by alcohol. Alcohol has interrupted her daily life because she no longer remembers the things that happen throughout the day: she uses alcohol to cope with despair. However, as she consumed more and more alcohol, the alcohol was no longer giving her the effects that she longed her. “She was beginning to feel toward alcohol a little puzzling distrust, as toward an old friend who has refused a simple favor” (144). Usually, alcohol creates a dream-like feeling for Hazel Morse throughout the day so that she does not have to face reality, but sometimes alcohol fails to do so. When it fails her, Hazel Morse is tired, depressed and suicidal. Suicide lingered with her for a while so she attempted to commit suicide so she no longer had to live in despair, but her attempted suicide failed. Even after her attempted suicide, Hazel Morse continued to drink to live her hazy life, unsatisfied and depressed. Hazel Morse became addicted to alcohol as her life progresses. Hazel Morse never realized that alcohol was never the answer to solving her problems. She used alcohol to fix her marriage, which failed. She used alcohol to become a good sport so that she could find another man after Herbie, which failed. Even though she had many lovers, she did not see one that she could have a life with. Her life was filled with despair and the only way Hazel Morse knew how to cope with this was to drink – drink to live a hazy life where her worries and loneliness were not an issue.