I Hold Your Hand in Mine

"I'm sorry now I killed you, / For our love was something fine. / Until they come to get me, / I shall hold your hand in mine ("I Hold Your Hand in Mine," 13-16).

I would like to dedicate this next song, "I Hold Your Hand in Mine," to the lovely couple of the evening, Othello and Desdemona. Unfortunately, neither of them could make it tonight as they are both dead.

Who's that handsome genius? His name is Tom Lehrer, retired Harvard mathematician and satirical musician, and among his vast collection of approximately fifty songs (half of which I am more than willing to perform for anybody), he wrote a few love songs, one of which is entitled, "I Hold Your Hand in Mine."

After Othello smothered his loyal wife with a pillow because he thought she was doing the dance with no pants with Cassio, Emilia belatedly informed Othello that everything Iago told Othello about Desdemona and Cassio was a huge lie. Out of love for his deceased wife, Othello stabbed himself in the chest, lay next to Desdemona, kissed her, and breathed his last. Lehrer's love song amazingly parallels the events and themes within the final scene of Othello, although his version is marginally more morbid:

In this number, Tom Lehrer presents his cynical view that what we call "love" may be on the cusp of insanity (or well beyond that point). As the speaker within "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" kissed his dead lover's hand after he killed her, so too did Othello kiss Desdemona after he killed her. Shakespeare teaches that the human defects of jealousy and assumptions can get in the way of true love, and Lehrer teaches that other human defects -- mental instability, for instance -- are obstacles to true love.

A final important similarity is that even after the deaths of their lovers, both Othello and the speaker in "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" still love their partners (or at least claim that they do).

Why isn't anybody jealous of "honest Iago"?

"But jealous souls will not be answered so. / They are not ever jealous for the cause, / But jealous for they are jealous. 'Tis a monster / Begot upon itself, born upon itself" (Othello, III.iv.153-156).

After reading three acts of Othello, I'm noticing that jealousy plays an important thematic role in the play.  The first clear instance of jealousy is Iago's jealousy of Cassio, whom Othello appointed to be his lieutenant rather than Iago.  Additionally, Roderigo is clearly jealous of Othello, who married Desdemona -- Roderigo has tried to steal her heart before the play begins, but to no avail.  Another big hint that jealousy is important is the handout Mr. Costello gave me with four important themes in Othello, one of which is jealousy.

Iago's wife, Emilia (whom I keep wanting to call Edith -- I'm not sure I can explain why), provides an interesting commentary on jealousy when she talks to Desdemona of Othello's apparent suspicion of Desdemona.  She says that people aren't jealous for a cause -- we are only jealous because we are jealous.  In other words, jealousy works in a repetitious cycle, and Othello becomes a part of that cycle when he suspects Desdemona of cheating on him with Cassio.  Also, I don't think I've used the word "jealous" so frequently in anything I've written before.

In honor of tonight's beautiful couple, Iago and Edith, I present this love song:

"And lying, she knew, was a sin."

"Zoe came up, slow, from behind and gave him a shove. His arms slipped forward, off the railing, out over the street. Beer spilled out of his bottle, raining twenty stories down to the street" ("You're Ugly, Too," 194).

But don't worry -- she was just joking! It reminds me of a certain Kenny who points a gun at a certain Tub to play a joke on him, but that one is a little bit more extreme.

I learned the different between verbal irony and sarcasm when I read the preface to one of the poetry units. Much like the difference between situational irony and coincidence, nobody seems to know it. I'm not even sure that I know what the difference is, but here it is. Verbal irony is any general instance of saying one thing but meaning another. Sarcasm is more specific and is sometimes a type of verbal irony; however, it's more abrasive or offensive. The difference between the two is easily observed (sorry about the passive voice -- I'm on a tight schedule) in the character of Zoe.

"She used to insist it was irony, something gently layered and sophisticated, something alien to the Midwest, but her students kept calling it sarcasm, something they felt qualified to recognize, and now she had to agree. It wasn't irony" (6). I'm here to argue that while sometimes she is definitely sarcastic, there are times when she is just being ironic.

When Zoe says that an "ultrasound" sounds like "a really great stereo system," she is not being sarcastic because her words are not harsh (57). Really, once the funny part is over, it's just kind of a sad statement. On the other hand, the joke about "you're ugly, too" is sarcastic (66). And since somebody is offended in sarcasm, it's that much funnier.

I'm not sure what else I wanted to cover in this post. Oh, yes. I think the point of the story could be to point out when humor goes too far, and I quoted the most concrete example of that in the story at the beginning of my post.

Does humor ever really go too far, though?

"Not only did she do them wrong, she did every one of them in."

"'The curse of hell from me shall ye bear, / Mother, Mother, / The curse of hell from me shall ye bear, / Such counsels you gave to me, O'" ("Edward," 53-56).

Apparently, this poem is brought to you by horrible parenting. If I wrote this poem, I would remain anonymous, too.

The repetitious repetition in this poem added a lot of emotion and suspense. And for me, black humor. I totally read the words to this poem with a song in my head -- how could I not? I was dancing around a bonfire in my head singing a song about some upper class guy who killed his dad, abandoned his family, and left his mother the curse of hell. Does it get any more jolly than that?

I'm more than willing to write a tune to this poem if nobody else has already. It would stand alongside such classic Tom Lehrer hits as "The Irish Ballad" about a maid who killed her entire family.

Speaking of Tom Lehrer, I am very confident that I can draw a parallel between the song "To His Coy Mistress" and the song "When You Are Old and Gray." I mean, that song was running through my head during the entire class discussion. Sorry about the Tom Lehrer overload.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

"And may there be no moaning of the bar / When I put out to sea" ("Crossing the Bar," 3-4).

I distinctly remember reading this in Channel 1 today and getting "We Will All Go Together When We Go" stuck in my head. Tom Lehrer sings, "We will all char together when we char, and let there be no moaning of the bar." Good allusion, Mr. Lehrer -- he's so smart!

I'm going to dissect the meaning of this metaphor here. "When I put out to sea" (4) is a metaphor for death. Later, "When I have crossed the bar" (16) serves as another metaphor for death, but what about "no moaning of the bar"?

Looking at it in the context of Tom Lehrer's song (which I know I'm not supposed to do, Perrine, but bear with me), we must accept that we're all going to "char" when the bomb drops on all of us. Lehrer sings about why dying together is a good thing -- it's a "comforting fact" that we're all going to be glowing with radiation when we all die, and there's no reason to "moan."

I'm going to use the definition of "bar" in my AHD that says "attorneys considered as a group." A "bar" defined thus is a group of attorneys, who state someone's case on behalf of him. The speaker does not want the "bar" -- those metaphorical "attorneys" -- to mourn his death on his behalf. Rather, he wants a quiet, subdued, and peaceful death.