Absurdity - Humor and Point Making

Humor and Point Making

Further information: Theory of humor and Absurdist humor "I can see nothing" – Alice in Wonderland
"My, you must have good eyes" – Cheshire Cat

Absurdity is used in humor to make people laugh or to make a sophisticated point, for example in Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", a poem of nonsense verse, originally featured as a part of his absurdist novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1872); Carroll was a logician and parodied logic using illogic and inverting logical methods. Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges used absurdities in his short stories to note points. Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis is considered absurdist by some.

Absurd reasoning is often used in comedies.

Read more about this topic:  Absurdity

Famous quotes containing the words humor and, humor, point and/or making:

    Every American, to the last man, lays claim to a “sense” of humor and guards it as his most significant spiritual trait, yet rejects humor as a contaminating element wherever found. America is a nation of comics and comedians; nevertheless, humor has no stature and is accepted only after the death of the perpetrator.
    —E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)

    Men’s happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.
    François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)

    Many women are surprised by the intensity of their maternal pull and the conflict it brings to their competing roles. This is the precise point at which many women feel the stress of the work/family dilemma most keenly. They realize that they may have a price to pay for wanting to be both professionals and mothers. They feel guilty for not being at work, and angry for being manipulated into feeling this guilt. . . . They don’t quite fit at home. They don’t quite fit at work.
    Deborah J. Swiss (20th century)

    The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
    Mao Zedong (1893–1976)