Barefoot In The Park

In his demeanor and approach to life, Paul is Corie’s opposite. He is a 26-year-old lawyer who “breathes and dresses like 56” (12), according to Simon’s stage directions. Where Corie jumps in, Paul observes. While Corie wants to do “[s]omething wild, insane and crazy” (15), Paul wants to go over his case files. When Corie decides she wants a divorce, she wants it effective immediately. Paul, on the other hand, insists on hashing out the finer points, going over alimony, custody of possessions, and more.

Like Corie, Paul struggles to accommodate his partner, but from the opposite extreme. He is inflexible and prone to negativity and complaining. He sees the apartment’s problems but offers no solutions. He also tends to dictate Corie’s responses to her. For example, he exhibits this in telling her to cry when she says she does not want to as well as in telling her not to “crack up” (79) when she is distressed about her mother. Paul also tends to deride situations that Corie enjoys, such as with trying the knichi and having dinner at the Armenian restaurant. 

While he does not know how to accommodate Corie, he does love her—even, as he tells her in Act Three, when he doesn’t “like”(92) her. He also provides stability for Corie. He works to support the couple financially and ensures all her material needs are met. Paul’s challenge is to recognize that he and Corie balance each other out. Faced with the prospect of losing her, Paul behaves completely out of character. He gets drunk, walks barefoot in the park in sub-freezing temperatures, and suggests that the couple prank their neighbors. In other words, he becomes the very person he mocks at the beginning of the play, which leads Corie to realize she values the same qualities that she mocked during their fights. Paul’s personality about-face also leads him to go out on the window ledge, where he becomes sick and panics. He waits for Corie to come out and save him, which enables him to see that he needs Corie’s problem-solving positivity as much as she needs his stability.

Ethel Banks is a widow and is Corie’s mother. Throughout the play, Ethel and her blind date, Victor, mirror the newlywed Corie and Paul, with Ethel resembling Paul. She watches life rather than jumping in and tends to focus attention on problematic elements. She insists she needs to sleep on a board for her bad back, pops pink pills for her sensitive stomach, and fixates on her daughter instead of sorting out her own life. Stage directions describe her as “pretty” but that she “has not bothered to look after herself” (21). She sends Corie gifts every day, goes out of her way to “drop in” (22) for a visit, and brushes off Corie when she says that she wants Ethel to spend her money on herself and enjoy her life. Ethel’s goal is to become a grandmother, but Corie tells her not to rush because “underneath that Army uniform, [she’s] still a young, vital woman” (29).

Ethel demonstrates greater flexibility than Paul does on the night of her blind date with Victor. First, she consents to go through with the date, although Paul would be happy for Corie to cancel the outing. Ethel follows Corie’s advice to be more adventurous and try new things. In some ways, this helps her. After falling asleep in Victor’s apartment, Ethel learns that she can sleep without her board. However, the outing also demands too much of her, and she becomes exhausted and dizzy. At the end of the play, she seems to have achieved a productive balance between enjoying her life, like in accepting Victor’s dinner invitation, and recognizing her limitations, like how the dinner will be “plain”(86) food.

Victor is one of Corie and Paul’s oddball neighbors who Corie furtively sets up on a blind date with her mother, Ethel. While out shopping for scotch in Act One, Paul hears Victor described as “The Bluebeard of 48th St.” (31) and learns that he enjoys skiing and mountain climbing. Bluebeard is a figure from French folklore known for murdering his wives. The description sets Victor up as a fearsome ladies’ man, but as his character develops, the description is more likely a product of his own tendency to embellish the truth, as Corie also does. Paul catches Victor shaving a few years off his age. He is 58 but claims to be 56, and he later admits to Ethel that he dyes his hair. Victor shares additional characteristics with Corie. He is creative and experiential but lacks practicality. When he makes his first entrance, he is trying to sneak into his apartment because he is behind on his rent. 

Victor demonstrates his creativity with the knichi, his off-the-beaten-track restaurant suggestion, and his flair, asevidenced in the hanker-tie and “Tyrolean hat” (32) he wears in the first act. His adventurousness is not always practical, as when he insists on driving Ethel back to New Jersey with no idea how he will get home. In the aftermath of their ill-fated evening, Victor learns he has not been taking proper care of himself and needs to balance his desire for adventures with his age and health. This development brings him more in line with Ethel, and the two begin a relationship at the end of the play.