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In Dorothy Parker: In Her Own Words, Barry Day describes Parker as a person “who had always toyed with death” (Day, Barry. Dorothy Parker: In Her Own Words. Taylor Trade Publishing, 2004, p. 39). He links her fascination with death to the deaths of her two mothers and two husbands. Parker’s life story pushes the poem into an autobiographical context, where Parker becomes both the speaker and the audience. In a sense, Parker is telling herself not to attempt death by suicide. Day says that “[t]here were at least half a dozen recorded attempts at suicide and probably several more” (Day 138). Like the “you” in the poem, Parker attempted death by suicide in multiple ways. She cut her wrists or used “[r]azors” (Line 1), and she drank shoe polish or ingested poisonous “[a]cids” (Line 3).

The early deaths of her mothers and her difficult romantic relationships with men showed Parker the hardships of life, and often, she couldn’t put into practice the key message of the poem: “You might as well live” (Line 8). Her multiple suicide attempts reveal

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