Assignment #1
Samuel Clemens
is described as “an enormous noticer.” Much of what he noticed as a boy growing
up in the small Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri, found its way
into his writings in books such as The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
He was always noticing whether people had their hands in their pockets or not,
how they dressed, walked, spoke or presented themselves to others.
All good
humorists are “enormous noticers.” Through keen observation and wit, many
comedians help us discover truths about ourselves and our society. Like Twain,
they find the inspiration for humor in the little details of real-life
situations that aren’t necessarily intended to be funny.
Assignment: Let’s find out how much you notice on a
typical day. Today, pay special attention to all the details, large and small,
of some part of your day: people,
school, places, buildings, etc. Then
make a list of what you saw. Try to recall as much detail as you can. On a separate sheet of paper, write a short
passage that changes some of the details of what you noticed on your route home
into something humorous.
Assignment #2
Under the pen
name of Mark Twain, Clemens found the inspiration for humor in the everyday and
in real-life situations that weren’t intended to be humorous:
When he was a
young reporter in Virginia City, Nevada, Twain encountered a stranger at a
billiard parlor who proposed a game for half a dollar – even offered to play
left-handed after watching Twain warm up. “I
determined,” Twain wrote later,
“to teach him a lesson.” But
the stranger won the first shot, cleared the table, took Twain’s money, “and all I got was the opportunity
to chalk my cue.”
“If you can
play like that with your left hand,” Twain
said, “I’d like to see you
play with your right.”
“I can’t,” the
stranger answered. “I’m
left-handed.”
Using the
Christmas story below, analyze the type of humor he used. How did he lend humor to everyday
situations? Often humorists have a
target for their humor. Is there a
target in this story?
Below are some types of humor to
consider. Which of these would describe
the humor found in the selection?
Farce –
an exaggerated, broadly improbable scenario using characters for humorous effect
Parody –
an imitation of someone else’s style for comic effect
Satire –
the use of ridicule or sarcasm to expose or attack vices or follies
Irony –
a play on words in which the intended meaning of the words used is directly
opposite their usual sense (i.e., calling a stupid plan “clever”)
A Mark Twain Christmas Story
Once there was a bad little boy
whose name was Jim — though, if you will notice, you will find that bad little
boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday-school books. It was strange,
but still it was true that this one was called Jim.
He didn’t have any sick mother
either — a sick mother who was pious and had the consumption, and would be glad
to lie down in the grave and be at rest but for the strong love she bore her
boy, and the anxiety she felt that the world might be harsh and cold towards
him when she was gone. Most bad boys in the Sunday-books are named James, and
have sick mothers, who teach them to say, “Now, I lay me down,” etc., and sing
them to sleep with sweet, plaintive voices, and then kiss them good-night, and
kneel down by the bedside and weep.
But it was different with this
fellow. He was named Jim, and there wasn’t anything the matter with his mother
— no consumption, nor anything of that kind. She was rather stout than
otherwise, and she was not pious; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim’s
account. She said if he were to break his neck it wouldn’t be much loss. She
always spanked Jim to sleep, and she never kissed him good-night; on the
contrary, she boxed his ears when she was ready to leave him.
Once this little bad boy stole
the key of the pantry, and slipped in there and helped himself to some jam, and
filled up the vessel with tar so that his mother would never know the
difference; but all at once a terrible feeling didn’t come over him, and
something didn’t seem to whisper to him, “Is it right to disobey my mother?
Isn’t in sinful to do this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their
good kind mother’s jam?” and then he didn’t kneel down all alone and promise
never to be wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and
tell his mother all about it and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her
with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes.
No; that is the way with all
other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this Jim, strangely
enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his sinful, vulgar way; and
he put in the tar, and said that was bully also, and laughed, and observed
“that the old woman would get up and snort” when she found it out; and when she
did find it out, he denied knowing anything about it, and she whipped him
severely, and he did the crying himself.
Everything about this boy was
curious — everything turned out differently with him from the way it does to
the bad Jameses in the books.
Once he climbed up in Farmer
Acorn’s apple-tree to steal apples, and the limb didn’t break, and he didn’t
fall and break his arm, and get torn by the farmer’s great dog, and then
languish on a sick bed for weeks, and repent and become good. Oh! no; he stole
as many apples as he wanted and came down all right; and he was all ready for
the dog too, and knocked him endways with a brick when he came to tear him.
It was very strange — nothing
like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled backs, and with
pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and bell-crowned hats, and
pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women with the waists of their
dresses under their arms, and no hoops on. Nothing like it in any of the
Sunday-school books.
Once he stole the teacher’s
pen-knife, and, when he was afraid it would be found out and he would get
whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson’s cap — poor Widow Wilson’s son, the
moral boy, the good little boy of the village, who always obeyed his mother,
and never told an untruth, and was fond of his lessons, and infatuated with
Sunday-school.
And when the knife dropped from
the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed, as if in conscious guilt,
and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon him, and was just in the very
act of bringing the switch down upon his trembling shoulders, a white-haired,
improbable justice of the peace did not suddenly appear in their midst, and
strike an attitude and say, “Spare this noble boy — there stands the cowering
culprit! I was passing the school-door at recess, and unseen myself, I saw the
theft committed!”
And then Jim didn’t get whaled,
and the venerable justice didn’t read the tearful school a homily, and take
George by the hand and say such a boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him
to come and make his home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires,
and run errands, and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife do household
labors, and have all the balance of the time to play, and get forty cents a
month, and be happy. No; it would have happened that way in the books, but it
didn’t happen that way to Jim.
No
meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to make trouble, and so the model boy
George got thrashed, and Jim was glad of it. Because, you know, Jim hated moral
boys. Jim said he was “down on them milksops.” Such was the coarse language of
this bad, neglected boy.
But the strangest thing that ever
happened to Jim was the time he went boating on Sunday, and didn’t get drowned,
and that other time that he got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on
Sunday, and didn’t get struck by lightning. Why, you might look, and look, and
look, all through the Sunday-school books from now till next Christmas, and you
would never come across anything like this.
Oh no; you would find that all
the bad boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned, and all the bad
boys who get caught out in storms, when they are fishing on Sunday, infallibly
get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in them are always upset on
Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on the Sabbath. How this
Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.
This Jim bore a charmed life —
that must have been the way of it. Nothing could hurt him. He even gave the
elephant in the menagerie a plug of tobacco, and the elephant didn’t knock the
top of his head off with his trunk. He browsed around the cupboard after
essence of peppermint, and didn’t make a mistake and drink aqua fortis. He
stole his father’s gun and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn’t shoot three
or four of his fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his
fist when he was angry, and she didn’t linger in pain through long summer days,
and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that redoubled the
anguish of his breaking heart.
No; she got over it. He ran off
and went to sea at last, and didn’t come back and find himself sad and alone in
the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet church-yard, and the
vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and gone to decay. Ah! no; he
came home as drunk as a piper, and got into the station-house the first thing.
And he grew up, and married, and
raised a large family, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality;
and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is
universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature.
So you see there never was a bad
James in the Sunday-school books that had such a streak of luck as this sinful
Jim with the charmed life.
