GP4: Humor - Application

 GP4: Humor - Application

Overview Humor is one of the harder guideposts I have come across. My application is a tricky one.

Application I will demonstrate with Antigone's opening line: "You would think that we had already suffered enough from the curse on our father Oedipus. I cannot imagine any grief you and I have not gone through. Do you know of the new decree of our uncle King Creon?" Now, here is what I did...




I tried the line many different ways. I read it angrily all the way through, then sad, then confused, then intense, then simple, and so on. Then, for the first two sentences, I laughed. It changed the entire essence of the line. Instead of me being upset and disappointed, Antigone became fed up and frustrated to the point of disbelief, to the point of laughter.

Just like Michael Shurtleff said, "There is humor in every scene, just as there is in every situation in life. We try in life to put humor everywhere; if we didn’t, we couldn’t bear to live. Because certain situations are deadly serious and human beings cannot bear all that heavy weight, they alleviate the burden by humor."

Because Antigone's situation is deadly serious, the only way she can alleviate all of that stress and responisility is by laughing at the craziness of it all.

Critique Helpfulness 4/5, but Difficulty 5/5 This one was a hard one that can only be really understood by fully enveloping yourself in the character, in the realness of the situation, and by understanding what you yourself what do in the same situation. Once you get it, you get it. But it takes a while to get there.

Up Next Homework :)