Gatsby: A Feel-Good Story

"'Wreck!' said Tom. 'That's good. Wilson'll have a little business at last'" (The Great Gatsby, 137).

It's one of those books that gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling once you've finished. Okay, maybe not.

But there's plenty of humor! I'm into dark humor that makes me laugh and writhe around simultaneously, and this quote is an excellent example of what I like to read. Wilson's wife has just been hit by a car, but all that Tom knows is that there's a crowd of people and cars around his gas station. Here, Fitzgerald achieves dark humor through dramatic irony. The audience knows that Myrtle has died, and Tom has no idea that he has just said one of the most insensitive things that could have come out of his mouth.

But that's certainly not the only time I got the giggles! I particularly enjoy when Nick realizes, "'No . . . I just remembered that today's my birthday'" (135). At first, it seems like a juxtaposition of a celebratory event with the catastrophic events of the day. So I laughed when I read that part. But once Nick starts to follow up on his birthday comment, I start to realize that to him, turning thirty just adds to the list of catastrophic events. He has a little mid-life crisis: "Thirty -- the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair" (135). At that point, it isn't really all that funny anymore -- it just ends up being really sad.

"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?

"And isn't it ironic?"

"'My brave little man!' she said with her eyes shining. 'It was God did it you were there. You were his guardian angel'" ("The Drunkard," 84).

Allow me to point out to the mother that only one page ago, this "guardian angel" was drunk on the streets threatening and cursing at old women (68-70). One of the questions in the book asks about the principal irony in the story, so I've come up with a list of possibilities. The irony in this story, if I'm not mistaken, is situational irony, and here are a few examples of that within the story:

• As I quoted previously, the mother praised her little boy for being "brave" and his father's "guardian angel," praise one wouldn't expect going to a boy who drank an entire glass of porter (34).
• The literal "drunkard" in the story is the father -- drinking is his "greatest weakness" (11) -- yet the only character who gets drunk in the story is a little boy (whose age is probably somewhere around ten as he is on the cusp of being able to look after his younger sibling -- 15).
• The little boy saved his father from drinking during the story by means of drinking himself. Not . . . drinking himself -- "himself" is not an object of the gerund in my last sentence.

To determine the main irony in "The Drunkard," I can probably combine the three situational ironies above into one grand ironic statement. The little boy in "The Drunkard" prevents his alcoholic father from drinking and wins the praise of his mother by drinking alcohol himself.

A lot of people -- including songwriters -- have trouble understanding irony, so I thought I might help with this quote from Hank Green: "Alanis Morissette, when you get a death row pardon two minutes too late, that is extremely unfortunate. It is not, however, ironic."

With submission, sir . . .

"So that Turkey's paroxysms only coming on about twelve o'clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time. Their fits relieved each other like guards" ("Bartleby the Scrivener," 13).

Question Thirteen asks about humor, so let's talk about the humor.

I found this story a bit tedious but genuinely funny. The images of certain characters was extremely humorous to me -- it took a while for me to recover after the "guards" simile. What it does is characterizes Turkey and Nippers in a very engaging way; it also creates some sympathy for the narrator, who has to deal with exactly one ill-tempered person at a time. The little repetitive phrases like "with submission, sir" (Turkey, various moments) also served as what I thought were funny characterization methods. There are other instances like this, but let's turn to Bartleby.

There's a strong contrast between the narrator and Bartleby when the narrator asks for something to be done. For example, when the narrator first explained that Bartleby needed to help examine the copies, he did so "hurriedly" with little patience (30). Bartleby, on the other hand, always maintained composure, no matter how weird he was. There are very ironic moments where the narrator will describe how intensely hardworking Bartleby is, and then Bartleby will inconsistently be of no assistance to the narrator.

Then again, I couldn't stop laughing when I was reading the poem "Edward," so I probably have little right to speak on the subject of humor.