The main characteristics of black humor

The theme choice of black humor involves the soil in which it comes into being. American society changed dramatically in the 1960s, and a great deal of social heterogeneity appeared. Traditional novels have gone from bad to worse, and hippies, war depression, mixed men and women and absurd social reality have become hot topics. All these provide the basis for the emergence of black humor. Black humor chooses scenes with ambiguous meaning, vacillation and rude awakening. This kind of scene provides writers with endless themes to deny old standards and establish new ones. Most of these themes go beyond the surface and form a concern for people's spirit and society. Take joseph heller's Catch-22 as an example. It is based on the experience of an American Air Force squadron in World War II. According to catch-22, only a madman can be exempted from flying, but he must apply for it himself, and once he applies, it just proves that you are a normal person or doomed. This is not a real war novel. Heller did not really describe the Second World War, but tried to describe the inner experience of human beings in hostile environment through the soldiers under Catch-22, and exposed the ugliness of social reality. Its ultimate goal is to expound the philosophy of life, not history.

In addition, black humor writers are also exploring topics in the field of science and technology. Most of them are university teachers, knowledgeable, and like to bring the concepts of natural science into literature. For example, Billy pilgrim, the hero of Slaughterhouse Five, has the ability to transcend time and space, and was kidnapped by UFO to the popular star 54 1. Different from traditional novels, the plot structure of black humor stories is chaotic. This complex scene composed of scattered plots is a portrayal of an absurd and disorderly society. But it can make readers enjoy the pleasure of establishing order from disorder. For example, in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse Five, time and space change with people's thinking. The thought of the protagonist Billy pilgrim jumps in the time level of "past", "present" and "future" and the space level between the earth and the popular star 54 1. At the beginning of the novel, the author said, "Listen! Billy pilgrim got rid of the shackles of time. " Then they are all narrated in Billy pilgrim's Time Travel, which seems to be composed of short pictures. He was on the battlefield for a while, in Erian for a while, and on the popular star 54 1 for a while, which made readers feel that the whole structure looked chaotic and the time and space were reversed. Vonnegut believes that a novel does not need a beginning, a center, an end or even a plot. Some writers also advocate writing by collage, which makes the plot of the work more messy.

Although the black humorous story is interspersed with countless subplots and characters, and the narrative order is chaotic, the author organically links all the plots through ingenious organization and complex relations between characters, forming a complete story structure. This layout shows that black humor writers not only reveal the disorder and absurdity of the world through content, but also use form.

Humor in black humor

It is difficult to define humor in language, because humor does not exist in the language itself, but in the scene described by the language. It is not strange to see a dog in the street, but people will laugh when they break into a dog in a meeting, because this is not the place where dogs should appear. Humor comes from this unexpected unconventional scene.

As for black humor, Von Nergert explained it this way: It is a gallows humor, which we can understand as "humor under the gallows". There is such an American folk joke: on a day of hanging death row, a large crowd of spectators gathered at the gallows. But the prisoner didn't come. Prisoners, executioners and the masses have become impatient. Finally, the jailer took the prisoner to the execution ground. Seeing people's anxious and greedy eyes, the prisoner could not help laughing. He proudly said, "You can't do anything without me." Seeing the crowd by the gallows, the prisoner smiled. This reflects a huge difference from the traditional description. It is an attempt to turn invisible fear into visible and tangible laughter. It makes people laugh, but it doesn't bring pleasure, because there is pain and misfortune hidden behind the funny, which will make people sad and afraid. It can be said that the mutual integration and infiltration of humor and fear is the essence of black humor.

In the eighth chapter of Catch-22, Captain Shea Kopf hated Clevenger because he was "a troublemaker and a man with brains" and was put on the trial bench. Heller described the interrogation process in a very playful tone, but the reader couldn't laugh. Because the funny veil is lifted, readers see horror: an innocent person will be a victim of dark reality at any time; Aggressive officers not only make Wen Jie, but also make readers tremble. In this trial, humor and fear blend with each other, and readers feel that there is fear in joy and joy in fear.

It can be seen that black humor is an artistic treatment of tragic content according to comedy, which should have made the sad death and war of the parties become the objects of ridicule, and readers can feel the sadness and fear behind them in laughter, thus achieving the effect of "desperate comedy". In Slaughterhouse Five, Bobby said in a relaxed and playful tone: That's it. It is by creating this absurd and distorted comedy atmosphere that black humor works form a unique genre style. Black humor is different from ordinary humor. Its absurdity, cynicism and cynicism contain heaviness and anguish, tears and pain, melancholy and cruelty, so its wry smile contains tears and even anger. Later, people usually used the word "black humor" in this sense.

Emphasize the absurdity of the world and the madness of society.

An important feature of "black humor" is to emphasize the absurdity of the world and the madness of society. It is a kind of humor that can't laugh or cry, and it is a mixture of tragic content and comedy form. It shows the absurdity of the world, the alienation of society to people, the confusion after the rational principle is shattered, and the futility of self-struggle, which is its central content. In the face of all this, people cynically distance themselves from reality with a humorous attitude towards life, so as to safeguard the dignity of the victims, which is called "black humor". Describing some morbid and deformed characters is another feature of the "black humor" literary school.

Most of the characters in the works of writers with erotic humor are morbid and abnormal. Billy in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse Five and Yossarian in Heller's Catch-22 were forced to play the role of a clown. This is contrary to the positive characters and ideal characters in traditional novels. It is not surprising that these despicable and crazy people become the masters of works and occupy a place in the gallery of people in world literature. The characterization serves the theme of the work, as long as it can better express the theme, even if it is absurd and funny. The hero in Catch-22, Youssolin, is a humble and wretched ghost who is afraid of death. In order to escape the bombing mission, he pretended to be crazy and sold stupidity, and finally fled to Sweden. These characters are the embodiment of a certain aspect of society at that time.

The story has the artistic characteristics of meaning and symbol.

"Black humor" is mostly grotesque fables, with artistic features of concealment and symbolism. Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five are metaphors of the reality of World War II. "Black humor" writers often render an illusory environment and create some deformed characters instead of pursuing typical characters in typical environments. Vonneger's Cradle of Cats, through the description of Dr. Hornick and his little dwarf son, implies that everything in the world is just a scam like coaxing children. And "the blue shake of the cat" has become a symbol of lies and deception; Thomas Pynchon wrote in The Rainbow of Gravity that the rocket falls like a rainbow arc under the action of gravity, which is a metaphor for the inevitable extinction of human beings. The rainbow of gravity has become a symbol of death. Therefore, "black humor" novel is a style close to fable. It usually has a deep symbolic meaning. The structure of "black humor" works adopts the narrative structure of "anti-fiction" and changes into a new dramatic method, which uses images to imply, contrast and symbolize, thus changing the traditional novel creation method. There are only fragments in the actual plot, and there are few complete storylines. This is one of the artistic features of the "black humor" school. This kind of novels use repetition and reinforcement, not change and development. As Vonneger said, "Let others give chaos, and I will give chaos". Black humor writers combine humorous things with lofty and serious things, and comedy factors with tragic factors. "Black humor" novels are used to breaking the concept of time and space and combining the relativity of time with scientific fantasy skillfully. This overlapping and multi-level structure plays an important role in the rapid development of the story and the deepening of the theme.

"anti-hero" character

The spiritual world of characters tends to split and become an "anti-hero" with both tragic and comic colors. Their absurd words and deeds allude to social reality and express the author's views on social problems. "Anti-heroes" are often obscene figures with strange behaviors and ideas. In traditional literary works, those heroes who are consistent in character, tall in image, firm in belief, tenacious and brilliant are replaced by some ridiculous and humble "anti-heroes". Heller's Catch-22, vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and Thomas Pynchon's Gravitational Rainbow are all set in World War II, but the protagonists in the three novels are not heroes who have made great achievements on the battlefield, and some even try their best to escape from the war, afraid of you damn fool, or crazy and stupid mental patients. They are people who are distorted by life and have only mental trauma in modern society. But the author's real intention is to make people realize the absurdity of the world and the darkness of reality through these seemingly absurd stories and characters. In this special background, that is, in the upside-down society, "anti-hero" shows its true and lovely side. The so-called "heroes" who are keen to get rich in wars and national disasters have become symbols of selfishness, greed, cruelty, arrogance and shameless of the bureaucratic system. The works of "black humor" are also innovative in language. They abandoned the beautiful tradition of language code, refused the concise and implicit language style, and were unconventional in language style, with long syntax and vague repetition, which made the novel confusing and illusory. In this respect, John Bass is the most prominent. His repetition of some sentences and punctuation marks in the text is also very irregular, giving people an abrupt and funny feeling, which is also a remarkable feature of "black humor" literature, and the content of "black humor" literature also determines its language form. These artistic features of "black humor" novels, which are different from traditional novels, make black humor literature, like other modernists such as "lost generation" and "lost generation", all the rage in a short time and become an important literary trend of thought in American literature.