Explore Feelings- is pain a humorous emotion?

Christina Kline

In the action filled book called The Gun Seller I came across a scene that was filled with violence and humor. This strange combination does create a humorous tone. A struggle between Rayner, a classic bad guy, and the Bond like character Thomas Lang veers off into random thought while the fight continues. Lang most likely suffers from ADD. He can't even keep his mind on a fight. Who in the world would be comparing a man's huge pores to holes in a golf course while he is having his arm broken?

"And God Almighty, what a forehead. Bricks, knifes, bottles and reasoned arguments had, in their time, bounced harmlessly off this massive frontal plan, leaving only the feeblest indentations between its deep, widely spaced pores. They were, i think, the deepest and most widely-spaced pores I have ever seen in human skin, so that I found myself thinking back to the council putting-green in Dalbeattie, at the end of the long, dry summer of '76."

This quote characterizes Lang perfectly. Lang is capable of violence and humor at the same time. The violence makes the humor even funnier because it is such an odd combination. This foreshadows all future events in the novel that relate to combat. This scene sets the tone for the rest of the book. For example, when Lang was kept prisoner he says, "It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full 15 seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement." This guy is insane. He even personifies pain as speaking many languages and wearing ethnic costumes. Most people would be so focused on the pain they would be unable to think. The dramatic effect does not magnify the emotion. It has the opposite effect. There should be crying and screaming but Thomas Lang is thinking literary thoughts. It is more unemotional which makes the book even more humorous. This seems to be the entire motivation for Hugh Laurie. His novel is extremely humorous and entertaining in a droll British way.

The Devil and His Boy

Tanner Hakert

English 8-6

Explore Feelings

March 4, 2010

Spoiler

During the beginning of the book, The Devil and His Boy, by Anthony Horowitz, Tom is looking for something to d while he is on his Journey. A man, Grimly, asks Tom if he would like to work for charity, but its not the type of charity that Tom was expecting. "They might give a penny to a child shivering with cold But how much do you think they would give to that same child, missing a leg?" (63). This scene is the turning point in Tom's atitude. Tom learns that he needs to be very cautious everywhere he goes because if he isn't, he could die. Tom's change in atitude could have helped him later in the book, but he let his guard down, and it almost got him killed.