Humor is a "momentary release"

Communicating Death with Humor: Humor is a means to discuss topics that are usually avoided in our society. Specifically, regarding death, humor can help create productive dialogue and relation around death and dying.  

 

Using Humor as a Coping Tool: Humor gives control over the ironies in life that we have no control over. It works in tandem with honesty and realism as a coping mechanism for mental illness.  

 

I think a quote that ties these two articles together is “Due Pré noted that humor/laughter provides people with a momentary release from a prior frame so that they can go back into I with more ease than before” (Death Studies, 7).  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Jesus Shaves" - Sedaris understanding of Humor

  Katie West  February 8, 2020  David Sedaris's collection,  The Best of Me,  creates, what I believe to be, a more common and neutral sense of humor (especially when in comparison to Ibry). Sedaris also uses many of the foundational philosophical elements of humor which we discussed last week within his writing. A perfect example that focuses on many aspects of humor is Sedaris’s essay, “Jesus Shaves”. This essay uses many tactics seen from philosophy; however, it is also on a very neutral level, it is appealing to everyone and is not too boring or too grotesque. David Sedaris opens this essay with a simple question, yet this question creates and builds into the description of a classroom setting. Sedaris immediately sets the tone for his mediocre care for French, and France, by stating that he will be “home and cleaning my oven” (69) on Bastille Day, the national French holiday to celebrate their country. He even later states that it was his “habit to tune out...
Read more

Sedaris' hyperbolism in "The incomplete Quad"

  When I began reading David Sedaris’ collection of essays in The Best of Me, I was turned off by the apparent smugness that came through the narrator. Even though it is apparent through his over-the-top hyperbolic style and tone, I left feeling unamused and a bit disgusted. Plainly, I felt as though the themes and motifs that Sedaris incorporates into these short anecdotes were muddled by the writer’s constant proclivity towards the antithetical virtues of a naive narrator. That being said, there is one particular essay that I did admire for its succinct message. In “The Incomplete Quad”, I was struck by the selfishness of the narrator and his inability to understand the nature of kindness. Sedaris weaves his narrative through his time at Kent State University where he took care of a paraplegic named Peg with Muscular Dystrophy. Throughout the short essay, Sedaris recalls the delinquent activities Peg and him engaged in from shoplifting to hitchhiking home to North Carolina from...
Read more

"Me (Never) Talk Pretty (In Italian) One Day"

      Sedaris' "Me Talk Pretty One Day" was not at all what I was expecting, yet I was pleasantly surprised. This chapter of the novel did not appear to be a humorous retell of Sedaris' time spent taking a french class. Rather, I had visions of it being a chapter dedicated to physical attractiveness. However, not only was this chapter unique and different from the usual memoir accounts I have read, but it was also extremely relatable. The fall of my junior year I spent the semester study abroad in Rome. While I could go on and tell you about the millions of stories I have about my travels, all the pasta I ate, and my prison-cell like apartment on the outskirts of Trastevere, Sedaris' account of his french class brings me back to my Italian class.       In short, my professor was horrid. She had very little tolerance for our class filled with American students who spoke not a lick of Italian. While my family is from Calabria and Modena, and my gran...
Read more