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)
“Let me work;
For I can give his humor the true bent.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Ideals possess the strange quality that if they were completely realized they would turn into nonsense. One could easily follow a commandment such as “Thou shalt not kill” to the point of dying of starvation; and I might establish the formula that for the proper functioning of the mesh of our ideals, as in the case of a strainer, the holes are just as important as the mesh.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“But Satan now is wiser than of yore,
And tempts by making rich, not making poor.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)