O. Henry’s Short Story, ‘While the Auto Waits’

Pretending to be someone you’re not ruins the chance for a real relationship.

A white automobile waits for a passenger in O. Henry's story, "While the Auto Waits." byvalet/Shutterstock

In his short story, “While the Auto Waits,” O. Henry shows what happens when people can’t connect with each other. When a young lady meets a young man in the park, they both put on a façade, masking who they really are.

Sincerity and openness can nurture real and long-lasting relationships, but the characters in this story pretended to be what they weren’t, and things didn’t end as they wished.

An Evening in the Park

A young lady arrives at the city park to read. She does not at first notice the young man nearby, but he has noticed her the past few nights in the same spot. She drops her book, and he finally sees his chance to meet her.

In an instant, the young man pounces upon the book and presents it to her. After he ventures a remark about the weather, she invites him to sit down. “Really, I would like to have you do so,” she says. “The light is too bad for reading. I would prefer to talk.”

The young man makes a forward remark about her beauty. That won’t do. She immediately sets him in his place, assuring him that she is a lady, and he should treat her as such. He quickly apologizes and, to reassure him, she directs his attention to the people passing by.

Seeing her change the subject, “the young man promptly abandon[s] his air of coquetry” and as she requests, begins wondering aloud about the individual lives of the passing people. The young woman takes on the air of an upper-class lady. She seems uninterested in knowing anything about the passersby. She wants to feel and experience instead the “great, common, throbbing heart of humanity.”

Though she wears very plain clothes, she professes that she is actually a rich and famous woman. She assures him that she unfortunately cannot give her name to the young man because he would instantly recognize it. She wears her plain clothes (a disguise, as she says, acquired through her maid) to remain incognito, so that she can live normally for a little while. The fancy white car at the park corner belongs to her, but her chauffeur thinks she is shopping.

Her life, she explains, is among the rich and famous. Despite her riches, she finds her life and the people whom she lives among dull, empty, and maddening. The young woman tells of the simple, empty trends which the rich follow but which continually change. She even sometimes wishes she could marry a man of lower status: “No calling could be too humble were the man what I would wish him to be.”

Sincerely Yours

She then asks the young man about his work. He confesses that he works as a cashier in the restaurant across the street. Despite the difference in their social status, he asks if he can see her again. She walks across the park toward the white automobile. And so does he.  

Henry conveys to us, as William Shakespeare says: “If thou dost love, proclaim it faithfully.” If we wish to enter into a true relationship with others, we must be sincere, faithful, and truthful.

Henry demonstrates the difficulties which arise through insincerity. When we fail to be sincere in our relationships with others, we can’t truly connect with another or form meaningful, lasting bonds.

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