The Way Up to Heaven Literary Elements

Short Story

The story is set in New York in the middle of the twentieth century. The majority of the plot takes place at an upscale home on the upper east side of Manhattan.

The story is written from the perspective of a third-person narrator who often takes on the point of view of Mrs. Foster herself.

The tone of the story is anxious, mirroring Mrs. Foster's experience of her husband's delays. The mood of the story is mysterious and eventually macabre, as readers discover that the subtle tension between husband and wife eventually leads to a death.

Mrs. Foster is the protagonist and Mr. Foster is the antagonist.

The central conflict in the story is the persistent tension between Mr. Foster – who is subtly but intentionally cruel to his wife – and Mrs. Foster, whose stress is exacerbated by her husband's behavior. Both the Fosters are governed by upperclass propriety, and it is not until Mrs. Foster breaks with this propriety by leaving her husband behind that she is able to relieve herself of the anxiety she experiences for the majority of the story.

The climax occurs as a result of Mr. Foster’s very last attempt to delay his wife which causes him to get stuck in the private elevator inside their home. Desperate that she is going to miss the plane, Mrs. Foster rushes to the front door to retrieve him, but upon hearing sounds from inside, instead turns around and takes the taxi alone to the airport, effectively leaving him to die.

That the narrator dwells for so long on Mrs. Foster's strangely still behavior at the front door suggests that this is a moment of foreshadowing for the end of the story. Though the reader does not know what Mrs. Foster hears behind the door, the moment anticipates the freedom Mrs. Foster experiences through abandoning her husband. The narrator also state that, “The chauffeur, had he been watching her closely, might have noticed that her face had turned absolutely white and that the whole expression had suddenly altered" (32), suggesting that something momentous has happened to her in these moments.

Understatement is most notable at the very end of the story. The story ends with the narrator saying, "She replaced the receiver and sat there at her husband’s desk, patiently waiting for the man who would be coming soon to repair the lift" (33). It is understated because, in reality, she is waiting for the repairman to discover the body of her dead husband. This understatement helps illustrate Mrs. Foster's own form of deception as she masks her one cruel act with feigned ignorance, just as her husband used to do to her.

The title of the story introduces a biblical allusion, as it prompts readers to wonder what kinds of acts warrant an afterlife in heaven. The title asks whether Mr. or Mrs. Foster's different forms of cruelty are more morally redeemable.

Imagery is largely absent from descriptions of Mrs. Foster, highlighting her anxious behavior and unwillingness to slow down for fear of being late. Notably, after Mrs. Foster leaves her husband behind, her experiences on the plane and in Paris are described more vividly, suggesting that she no longer suffers from her pathology and that it was simply her husband who induced her anxiety after all.

In a form of paradoxical irony, Mr. Foster's penchant for tormenting his wife becomes his ultimate torment as she takes on some of his cruelty and leaves him in the elevator to die.

Parallelism exists in the way Mr. Foster continually delays his wife. His descent down the staircase in front of their house is described in similar terms on both days, illustrating how regular his intentional slowness has become. The story also suggests that Mrs. Foster experiences a similar pleasure in Mr. Foster's potential suffering that he did in hers, rendering them parallel characters whom the reader must ultimately judge on a moral scale.

Mrs. Foster's eye twitch is a metonymic representation of her fear and anxiety. When she is worried about being late, her eye begins to twitch, and does not stop until long after the situation has been resolved. Mr. Foster uses this physical manifestation of his wife's fear to confirm that he has successfully contributed to her stress.

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