Humor and Heart Break:

Humor and Heartbreak, two words that most people don’t put together. Some say there is nothing funny about life and what it throws at you but these stories prove that wrong. In Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore, Charlene, the mistress, jokes about her lifestyle as “the other woman” and in Willful Creatures; the big man intimidates and tortures the little man to get a powerful feeling of superiority because he feels better about himself when someone else is worse off. And how can you not find humor in a relationship where you don’t even know the other person you’re envisioning your life with? Heartbreak and humor are complex and personal emotions but if you look closely enough you will see how they come together in the most unlikely ways.

The Effect of Living Backwards –Heidi Julavits

Humor and heartbreak are two very different emotions but at the same time they can be intertwined for a truly remarkable story. In The Effect of Living Backwards, Heidi Julivits tells of the very interesting relationships of the passengers of Moroccan flight 919. Bruno, the hijacker and "humane" terrorist's story makes you wonder, is it really worth the repercussions to test the person you love and married? And the interesting pull negotiator Pitcairn has on passenger Alice further makes you question, why does infatuation make you act the way you do?

From the start you can see that there is something missing from Bruno, not just his eyesight. He is cynical and almost bitter in a sense. You hear him tell stories of how he lost his eyesight to the hostages but it isn't until his "Shame Story" that you find out the truth. When he is harassing Justin, one of the hostages, you hear how the devastating events that lead up to the loss of his eyesight still affects him today. “Let me guess. She refuses to get an abortion. She's Catholic, sure, but those girls are only ever Catholic after the fact. It never stops them from taking their panties off in rubberless African countries, does it?" (pg. 102, The Effect of Living Backwards). Bruno's tangent about Catholic girls and “after the fact” makes you wonder, why is he so worked up about someone else's problem? Bruno's "Shame Story" tells of how he met his wife, a former nun, and how a legless neighbor and Bruno's own sick games changes his life forever. "She confessed to me the reason she'd left the Church. She had always found people without limbs, noses, crucial body parts to be loathsome. They made her sick, no matter how many times she went to confession." (pg. 119, The Effect of Living Backwards). After hearing this Bruno decides to play a trick on his wife to test her to see how much she loves him. He is convinced that she will love and be with him forever no matter what. He has a friend glue his eyes shut and fakes an accident and tells his wife he has gone blind. She reacts poorly and leaves the house. After removing the glue he becomes sick, "It's just a reaction to the glue, I told myself, to the stress of my wife's leaving me. It wasn't until too late that I discovered I'd contracted a virus, something I'd picked up in Borneo, at least that's what the doctor deduced...Blindness occurred only in the rarest of cases." (pg. 126, The Effect of Living backwards)

There is something slightly humorous about how Bruno lost his eyesight. Playing mean spirited tricks and games on his own wife caused him the greatest heartbreak, losing his eyesight. Perhaps, had he not glued his eyes shut and tricked his wife, the blindness never would have occurred?

"Everything will be ok just listen to me and follow my exact instuctions."

Another look into humor & heartbreak would be the "relationship" between Alice and Pitcairn. After being chosen by Bruno to talk to the negotiator, Alice becomes enthralled with Pitcairn. She has wild fantasies about meeting him and having a life together. She thrives on the words and stories he speaks to her and instructions he gives. Alice has always been unlucky in love. Never had the great boyfriend, just lame Miles Keebler who isn't technically even her boyfriend. You can tell that Alice craves and loves the attention that she receives from Pitcairn over the radio. "There was a warming area in my chest the size of a plum pit when I talked about Pitcairn. Maybe it was just because he made me feel important. Or maybe it was something else all together." (pg. 161 The Effect of Living Backwards) Alice has always envied Edith in a way because Edith always had boyfriends and lovers and men who fell at her feet and all Alice was the "look out". She was so excited that she had been chosen over Edith by this man, whom she didn't even know. Even when she was alone and Pitcairn was no where to be found she still talked to him in her head. The idea of a grown woman who is seemingly intelligent but has fake conversations with a man she doesn't know is sure to make anyone chuckle, what is she thinking? "I wanted his face as I had imagined it, with mousy hair and a mousy three-day scruff of beard, with eyes and lips that refused to come into focus. He was all sweet nimbus to me." (pg. 189, The Effect of Living Backwards). In Alice's fantasy world she and Pitcairn would be together and they would have the perfect life. And that is exactly what it is, fantasy.
Fantasy realism is how you could describe Alice's thought pattern. Her fantasies involve real people and ideas but not a real relationship. If they did involve a real relationship and life with Pitcairn, it would be heartbreaking for Alice, if he did not live up to the idea she had painted in her head of who he is.

Self Help- Lorrie Moore

Heartbreak and humor come together in a number of ways in the book Self Help. One of the most apparent ways is in the first story, How to Be an Other Woman. Charlene uses humor to avoid the reality of heartbreak that this affair is causing her. Even though the situation itself is not good, we see the story as funny because we see humor in things other than the situation. She develops an almost obsession with his wife, and begins to imagine that random women are her. To counteract this she writes lists of things to do in attempts to mock the situation and the unknown wife/girlfriend. She says the wife has “list-makers disease” (pg7, Self-Help), to make herself feel better, because deep down she is starting to feel less wanted by the man. When confronted by her mother about the situation she mocks her mother “wonder why she always polishes the silver after meals”. Pointing to the fact that she is upset over the situation she is in, but won’t face it. Instead she makes jokes to make it seem trivial. She also uses stereotypes to downplay the situation “Meet in expensive raincoats, on a pea-soupy night.”(pg3, Self Help). Another story in Self Help that uses humor in the face of heartbreak is How to Become a Writer. Heartbreak is not only caused by love of a person, but also from desire or passion in any part of life. In this story the woman decides to start writing in college. She starts going to writing classes and realizes that nobody likes her work. She has a strong interest in it and uses humor to deflect from the fact that she loves to do what nobody thinks she is good at. She tries to joke about her shortcomings “you decide not to go to law school at all, and, instead, you spend a good, big chunk of your adult life telling people how you decided not to go to law school after all.” (pg125, Self-Help). With a sarcastic look at the situation at hand the writer allows you to laugh a little at her shortcomings.











'Joe the Plumber' Calls Himself 'blunt'

Flying Leap –Judy Budnitz

In Judy Budnitz’s book Flying Leap both humor and heartbreak are used throughout the story Average Joe. Joe Morris begins receiving phone calls and visits from famous individuals; all of whom are asking for his advice. The first call informs him that he is the quintessential man and thus makes a good representative for the general masses. Upon learning this he immediately responds by asking, “So you’re saying I’m special?”(pg.95, Flying Leap) The humor here is that he is only special by being the most ordinary. Most people would not be excited to learn that they are average but the constant questioning over the phone and frequent visits gave Joe a sense of recognition that was completely unfamiliar to him but he welcomed it nonetheless. After all it was about time he got noticed for once. Eventually the phone stops ringing and no one visits to ask questions until he gets one final phone call, a simple follow up question. He is informed by the caller that he is no longer the statistical average man, to which he replies, “How can that be?” Joe is shocked, confused and ultimately hurt that no one is interested in his opinion any longer. “[Joe] couldn’t believe no one had any questions for [him].”(pg.108, Flying Leap) He liked all the attention he was getting but now he’s back to the same old Joe, with his TV programs, case of beer, and faithful companion Sheena. With this renewed peace and quiet Joe concludes, “I ought to be perfectly happy.” Budnitz is implying that, despite the incessant pestering, Joe is heartbroken, so to speak, because no one needs him anymore. He ought to be happy but can’t quite figure why he is not. He misses that recognition that he briefly experienced.

Mickey Cartoons — Giantland (Nov. 25, 1933)

Willful Creatures -Aimee Bender

Willful Creatures is a prime example of the relationship between humor and heartbreak. Many of the stories in the book are about lonely “people” or “people” who have been shunned by society and/or loved ones.
The story “End of the Line” perfectly illustrates this in Aimee Bender’s, Willful Creatures. This whole story revolves around a big man and his pet little man. The big man has faced heartbreak on many different levels. He has no wife or children we come to understand that the big man “didn’t like politeness and he didn’t like people.”(pg.20, Willful Creatures). The book further describes how no one noticed his new coat at work, and a woman who he asked out turned him down by embarrassing him to other coworkers. Clearly, the big man was lonely and had no one to turn to except his pet little man.
At first, the big man and the little man got along, but soon the little man expressed his feelings of wanting to leave and return to his family. This hurt the big man feelings. The one and only companion he had, wanted to desert him; hence, the big man’s heart breaks again. This time the big man retaliated. He turned his feelings of abandonment into feelings of aggression.

In order to fully explain how the big man’s actions of hostility toward the little man can be considered humorous, we must look at Hobbes theory of humor. In summary, Hobbes, theory states that humor is “aggressive expression of power and judgment over another.” In other words, “laughter (humor) arises when we take fleeting satisfaction in our superiority over another person.” This is exactly what the big man began to do to the little man. He began to find pleasure in asserting his power over the little man. He humiliated the little man by stuffing him in his pants and forcing the little man to show him his penis. He also physically abused him the more the little man cried out in pain and begged to go home, the more the big man tortured him. By doing this, he was trying to feel better about himself. However, the little man soon expressed that he was no longer afraid of the big man, and he had become numb. ”The little man folded his hands under his cheek in a pillow. Pain was no longer a mystery to him, and a man familiar with pain has entered a new kind of freedom.”(pg. 23, Willful Creatures) Once the big man realized that the little man no longer cared about the situation, the big man set him free. This proves that the big man was only happy when someone else was as miserable as he was. Once he realized that the little man no longer cared, that meant that the little man was no longer going to express any type of misery. When he did this, he removed the big man from his place of superiority over him. Therefore, the big man no longer found humor in the situation.

End Note:

Humor and heartbreak are both personal. Some may find humor in the most unlikely situations and heartbreak can be caused by something other than a lost love. Whether you are searching so desperately for someone to love that you create a fantasy or love the happiness and joy it brings when someone asks for your advice. As humans we find humor to be a stress reliever, conversation starter and finding comedic relief in strange and unlikely places make for wild and interesting ideas on life.

Works Cited :

Bender, Aimee. Willful Creatures. Random House 2005

Budnitz, Judith. Flying Leap. Picador USA 1998

Julavits, Heidi. The Effect of Living Backwards. Penguin Group 2003

Moore, Lorrie. Self-Help. Knopf Inc. 1985

Group Members: Kevin S. Dehn, Charlene Winburn, Lauren Kohne, Brian Clements