Black Humor, Gallows Humor and Identity Crisis in Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night
Black Humor, Gallows Humor and Identity Crisis in Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night
One of the most distinctive elements of Kurt Vonnegut’s style is black humor, which often co-occurs with gallows humor. There are many misconceptions about these two terms for which their co-occurrence gives a firm basis, and as these two concepts are almost identical, it takes a careful examination for one to be able to distinguish them. In my following essay, I would like to clarify the meanings of black humor and gallows humor and point out how they function in a certain literary work, which in this case is Vonnegut’s Mother Night, and then analyze the identity crises of certain characters of the story.
As I have written, there are many similarities between black humor and gallows humor, and in order to make a distinction between them, first I would like to point out those features that are shared and typical of both of them. To create such humor, the writer always confronts rationality with the chaos of the universe and the notion of death. Both black humor and gallows humor function as a counterbalance which mitigates the seriousness of death, or a situation which eventually ends with death. In both cases the constraint of laughter is rooted in the sense of inertia, and in the acknowledgement of the insensitivity of the universe to human reasoning. They are both based on a sense of defeat, because of which they cannot be triumphant satires, still they are comical for they reveal nonsense.
Now that I have examined the common features of these two types of humor, I will proceed with the most salient difference between the two. In the case of black humor, the object of laughter applies to the laughing subject as well, while it is quite different with gallows humor, as the reader cannot identify with a condemned character who is waiting for his own death. Obviously, the reader hasn’t experienced anything like that before, so the notion of impending death is unknown to them, that’s
One of the most distinctive elements of Kurt Vonnegut’s style is black humor, which often co-occurs with gallows humor. There are many misconceptions about these two terms for which their co-occurrence gives a firm basis, and as these two concepts are almost identical, it takes a careful examination for one to be able to distinguish them. In my following essay, I would like to clarify the meanings of black humor and gallows humor and point out how they function in a certain literary work, which in this case is Vonnegut’s Mother Night, and then analyze the identity crises of certain characters of the story.
As I have written, there are many similarities between black humor and gallows humor, and in order to make a distinction between them, first I would like to point out those features that are shared and typical of both of them. To create such humor, the writer always confronts rationality with the chaos of the universe and the notion of death. Both black humor and gallows humor function as a counterbalance which mitigates the seriousness of death, or a situation which eventually ends with death. In both cases the constraint of laughter is rooted in the sense of inertia, and in the acknowledgement of the insensitivity of the universe to human reasoning. They are both based on a sense of defeat, because of which they cannot be triumphant satires, still they are comical for they reveal nonsense.
Now that I have examined the common features of these two types of humor, I will proceed with the most salient difference between the two. In the case of black humor, the object of laughter applies to the laughing subject as well, while it is quite different with gallows humor, as the reader cannot identify with a condemned character who is waiting for his own death. Obviously, the reader hasn’t experienced anything like that before, so the notion of impending death is unknown to them, that’s