Humor and Irony

1. Humor and Irony ChapterSeven

2. « Serious » • Literary and artisticworksmaybe « serious » but not necessarilysolemn • Humorcombinedwithsignificant insight intohuman nature • Greek and Roman plays • Shakespeare’shumor • Chaucer • Austen • Dickens • Twain • O’Connor

3. Irony vs. Sarcasm • Sarcasm – language a person uses to belittleanother • Irony – technique used to conveytruth about humanexperience by exposingsomeincongruity of a character’sbehavior or society’s traditions

4. Verbal Irony • Figure of speech in which the speaker says the opposite of what he/she intends to say • “You’re wasting away before my very eyes.” (spoken to overweight Tub in “Hunters in the Snow”; uses irony and sarcasm to ridicule Tub) • “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish [we] were the only ones just right” (narrator in “The Lesson”; irony establishes distance between adult narrator and her youthful self who thought she knew everything—not sarcasm)

5. Dramatic Irony • Contrast between what a character says and what the reader knows to be true • Loretta Bird says of Mrs. Peebles, “She wouldn’t find time to lay down in the middle of the day, if she had seven kids like I got” is ironic because Loretta herself often “finds time” to sit gossiping at the Peebles farm instead of staying home with her children (“How I Met My Husband”)

6. Situational Irony • Discrepancy between appearance and reality, expectation and fulfillment, or what is and what would seem appropriate • Mr. Das’s guidebook to India appears to have been published abroad; Indian Mr. Kapasi watches American show Dallas, but American Tina has never heard of it (“Interpreter of Maladies”) • Rainsford, “the celebrated hunter” becomes the hunted (“The Most Dangerous Game”)

7. Irony • Often a means for compression – suggests complex meanings without stating them • Ironic contrast between appearances and reality generates a complex set of meanings • Three hunting buddies are not “friends” in any meaningful sense of the word; their cruel, self-absorbed behaviors provide contrast (“Hunters in the Snow”)

8. Importance of Irony • Truth must be produced indirectly • A flat statement (an essay, a plot summary) can have no emotional impact on readers • Readers must feel the truth, not simply understand it intellectually • If a story has no emotional impact, it has failed as a work of art

9. Sentimentality • Contrived or excessive emotion • Stories try to elicit easy or unearned emotional responses • Uncle Tom’s Cabin tries to wring tears from the reader over the plight of African-American slaves • In contrast, Beloved uses carefully restrained, artful language and frequently biting irony in its castigation of slavery • Genuine emotion if life is treated faithfully and perceptively; sentimental narrative oversimplifies and exaggerates emotion

10. Recognizing Sentimentality • Editorializing: commenting on the story and thus instructing readers how to feel • Poeticizing: overwriting; using immoderately heightened and distended language to accomplish efforts

11. Recognizing Sentimentality • Excessive Detailing: being highly selective in details that all point one way—toward producing emotion rather than conveying truth • Little child who dies is always uncomplaining and cheerful under adversity, never naughty or ungrateful; may be an orphan or the only child of a mother who loves him dearly; may be lame, hungry, and in possession of one toy, from which he cannot be parted • Villain may be all villain with a cruel laugh and sharp whip, though he may reform at the end (sentimentalists believe in the heart of gold beneath rough exterior)

12. Recognizing Sentimentality • Relying on Stock Response: emotion has its source outside of facts established by the story • Some situations/objects produce an almost automatic response (babies, mothers, grandmothers, young love, patriotism, worship, etc.) • Don’t go to trouble of picturing the situation in realistic and convincing detail

13. Recognizing Sentimentality • Presenting “Sweet” Picture of Life: relying on stock themes • Every cloud has a silver lining (If the little child dies, he goes to heaven or makes some life better by his death.) • Virtue is triumphant (The villain is defeated; true love is rewarded.) • Specializes in “sad but sweet”

14. Human Experience • “The writers we value most are able to look at human experience in a clear-eyed, honest way and to employ literary techniques such as humor and irony as a way to enhance, not reduce, the emotional impact of their stories.” • “A complex human reality requires a complex narrative technique, and in this way the best storytellers always have attempted to portray the whole of human experience—from its most tragic misery to its most absurd folly—in a single, integrated artistic vision.”