On the Characteristics of Black Humor

In the American literary world in the 1960s, many writers showed similarities in their creative styles: single-dimensional personality, intentional separation of characters and feelings, absurdity, abnormal handling of tragic materials, and fragmented narrative structure; A clear understanding of unreliable reality and a detached wait-and-see; Regardless of good and evil, imitation, ridicule and so on. They attracted the attention of readers and critics. From 65438 to 0965, Friedman published an anthology of thirteen writers, including himself, entitled Black Humor. These writers did not have an assembly or association, nor did they have the same program or manifesto, but their works appeared in the American literary world at that time with a similar appearance. Because of this similarity, they are called. Black humor? Pie.

Black humor is a literary method to express tragic content in the form of comedy. ? Black? Is for death, which is a terrible and funny reality. Humor? This is a mockery of reality by a willing person. Adding black to humor becomes desperate humor. This school of writers mobilizes all the artistic techniques that can be mobilized to enlarge and distort the funny, ugly, deformed and dark world around them, making it even more absurd.

I. Theme

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. With Joseph? For example, Heller's Catch-22 is based on the experience of an American Air Force squadron in World War II. According to catch-22, only a madman can avoid 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, the hero of Slaughterhouse Five? Pilgrims have the ability to transcend time and space, and were kidnapped by UFOs to Volkswagen 54 1.

Second, the character image

The protagonists of traditional novels generally embody the theme of the novel and keep consistent with the mainstream consciousness of history, which is positive. And this is exactly what black humor deviates from. There is no strict definition of positive and negative characters in black humor works. On the one hand, these characters are absurd and cowardly, trying to evade their responsibilities. On the other hand, they walk on the opposite side of the trend, exposing the absurdity and ugliness of human nature and becoming a different kind of heroic image. These anti-hero images doubt all traditional values and have a sense of loneliness that everyone is drunk and I am alone. Yusuolin in Catch-22 is a fighter against the system and a cowardly deserter. Such characters become a unique landscape of black humor and an indispensable part of its artistic expression.

Third, the narrative structure

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. Like in Kurt? In vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, time and space change with the change of human thinking. The protagonist Billy? Pilgrims' thoughts jump in the past, present and future time level and the space level between the earth and the popular star 54 1. At the beginning of the novel, the author says: Listen! Billy? The pilgrims got rid of the shackles of time. ? And then in Billy? The pilgrim narrative in Time Travel 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.

Fourthly, 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: This is a Gallo 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 said proudly, 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.

Chapter 8, catch-22, because of Krivenger? A troublemaker with brains? Hated by Captain Shea Kopf, he was put on trial. 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. Desperate comedy Effect. 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.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) conclusion

Black humorous works are unique in subject matter, characters, narrative structure and humorous features, forming their own artistic characteristics. They show deep sorrow through their absurd description of reality and unique structure, which not only exposes the absurdity of society and its people's psychology, but also shows strong concern for society. Understanding the artistic characteristics and foundation of this literary school will help us better understand the deep-seated reasons for its emergence, development and decline in recent years, and also help us better understand the social problems and its development process reflected by it.