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¶ … humorous writing that still makes the reader stop and think about what they are reading.
In "Would Hemingway Get Into Harvard?" The authors, John Katzman, Andy Lutz, and Erik Olson offer up a funny essay about the new SAT writing test. To "test" the test, they use two passages from two of the world's greatest writers, Ernest Hemingway and Shakespeare. Predictably, under the new SAT grading standards, both these writers would have received failing grades on the SAT. The authors are trying to make the point that the test is not a real measure of a person's writing abilities, and they do it in a very funny and yet memorable way. They definitely bring pleasure to others, because this essay is so well written you have to smile when you read it, and when you see the outcome of the test scores.
In "Technology Makes Me Mad," by Patricia Volk is a very humorous look at the high-tech world and what she hates about it. Anyone...
For example, she writes, "But I feel betrayed when my state-of-the-art refrigerator breaks down. State-of-the-art actually means no one's really sure it works right yet" (Miller 577). Her humor is definitely meant to amuse others, and it is very appealing because she makes it very personal, so the reader can identify with her and her troubles with technology.
John R. Alden's "Breakfast at the FDA Cafe" is a funny commentary not only on the foods we eat and what's in them, but it is also a sobering look at our litigatious society and how everything now seems to come with a warning label for something or other, no matter how petty or nonsensical the information can be. The writer is also spoofing the FDA, which is the grandfather of warning labels on food and drugs, but still cannot seem to find the cause…
References
Miller, Robert Keith. Motives for Writing With Student Access to Catalyst. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005.
Comedic Writing How does one describe the nature of comedy? Comedy is both simple and complicated. How comedy works is simple, but what is funny is complicated. Comedy describes the nature of the universe in universal terms. Every culture has a sense of humor. Every culture across the global and across time values humor. There are figures in literature and culture such as "the fool," and "the jester." These kinds of
L.O.L. In N.A.D. Written by a physician who is also a writer, this article looks at the mind-bending jargon physicians use every day. She clearly shows how these nearly illegible acronyms become so common in the healthcare field that practitioners do not understand why nonprofessionals cannot figure them out immediately. Humorous and yet sad, the essay shows jargon serves a purpose, to "remove" the patient from the physician, and this
Enlightenment-era, Neo-Classical works with Romantic overtones 'Tartuffe," Candide, and Frankenstein all use unnatural forms of character representation to question the common conceptions of what is natural and of human and environmental 'nature.' Moliere uses highly artificial ways of representing characters in dramatic forms to show the unnatural nature of an older man becoming attracted to a younger woman. Voltaire uses unnatural and absurd situations to question the unnatural belief
Humor in Literature American literature is unique in that the attitudes of the works tend to reflect the spirit of the nation and of her citizens. One of the trademarks of American literature is that authors display a tone that can be very serious, but that also can be interpreted as humorous. Whereas texts from other cultures are usually more concerned with message and in presenting that message in a dry,
Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass. Specifically, it will focus on two particular chapters. First, Chapter 27 (Inspection of Concrete, or Barbaric, Mystical, Bored), and Chapter 28 (The Imitation of Christ). The question posed is: what is the historical, thematic, and stylistic significance of those two chapters on the book? Gunter Grass' "The Tin Drum" is a historic look at a Polish family with a young son stunted by an
At times, the language was a little too academic for my liking; I think the same basic points could have been made more persuasively using more common language. But that issue aside, this piece says a lot of interesting things about writing in general, and not just about writing essays. Cynthia Ozick's vies on poetry and novels, and the ways in which these intersect with and diverge from the