Sedaris Reflection

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Philosophers' Theories on Humor

      I disagree with Plato's theories on humor, and I think Irby's writing provides significant support to prove Plato is wrong. Plato believes laughter is something to be avoided, as it comes from a lose of control and a place of malice. According to Plato,  we laugh at vice, or self-ignorance, of people who are powerless (10). I argue that we laugh at vice or self-ignorance in our selves, and that this source of laughter is only a percentage of the things we find humorous. Irby shows this first hand, presenting the less admirable and desirable aspects of herself and personality and making jokes of her own experiences. We laugh at her work, not because we think of ourselves as better than her, but rather because we can relate to her, and are laughing at her ability to make relatable parts of the human experience into something fun and humorous. In this way, we repute Hobbes' superiority theory of laughter, that we laugh as a sudden expression of glory in feeli...
Read more

Gurba

     Thinking back to the readings we did for last class, looking at how humor functions in conversations surrounding death or depression, humor was often used to act as a relief from the anguish or dread that surrounds the topic. Making yourself or your audience laugh redirects and alleviates some of the uncomfortable feelings. While Gurba doesn’t cite this as her primary purpose when writing about her experience being sexually assaulted, I do think that it serves a similar role in her article. While recounting her own experience she ends the paragraph by telling the reader that she “wasn’t really dressed for rape” and recounts the sound of her leopard print wedges on the sidewalk. It's observation that is tonally in stark contrast to the previous description of the encounter. This use of humor provides relief to the reader and the writer while addressing the event.      Gurba also writes that the reason she uses humor in her writing is to pu...
Read more

New Kid by Jerry Craft

Craft’s New Kid  is a comic book about the hardships Jordan faces with friends, school, and his parents. His hardships are primarily based on how he feels as a minority and the expectations put on him by his surrounding environment. Jordan starts attending a new school, RAD, and immediately begins to notice the microaggressions in this new environment. Jordan likes to draw, and every few pages of the book there is a comic strip and drawings by Jordan. His caricatures and dramatization of the people and ideas around him were what I believed was the funniest part of the book. But, I believe there is something much deeper to this humor, it is Jordan’s way of understanding and grappling with his place in this world and the expectations that people put on him.  The first of Jordan’s drawings that we see are a back to school poster of rulers, calculators, and textbooks with evil faces on them and kids running away. The history textbook is even holding some kids looking like it is ab...
Read more