INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 2, ISSUE 9, SEPTEMBER 2013 ISSN 2277-8616 Comedy As A Way Of Correcting The Ills Of Society: A Critical Reading Of Wole Soyinka's The Trials Of Brother Jero And Harold Pinter's The Caretaker Confidence Gbolo Sanka, Cecilia Addei ABSTRACT: Many a time, some readers and theatre-goers tend to have a misleading understanding of comedy. To such people, comedy is all about laughter and the riff-raff of society. They never associate humour with criticism and as such, the utilitarian aspect of comedy as an instrument for correcting the ills of society is often overlooked. In much the same way, they often tend to overlook the art and skill with which comic writers are able to present the unpleasant in a pleasurable manner and the offensive acceptable. This paper expatiates on the meaning, role, and some dramatic techniques used in comedy through a critique of Wole Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero and Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker. Index Terms— Comedy, Tragedy, Humour, Absurd Comedy, Kitchen-Sink Drama, Dramatic Techniques, Criticism ———————————————————— 1 Introduction This definition of comedy highlights the importance of ridicule We start by discussing the definition of comedy as given by in comedy. Comedy does not criticise people who are worse Aristotle and other critics. This is followed by a discussion of than us in the sense of their being evil through and through. It the difference between comedy and tragedy and the simply focuses on the correction of the follies and weaknesses respective roles of both genres. This then paves the way for of those being imitated on stage. This explains why in the an explanation of the role of humour or laughter in comedy. world of comedy, the audience do not always identify The rest of the paper has been devoted to the form of comedy themselves with the protagonist. There is a distance created in the two plays and the comic devices used by Soyinka and between the audience and the hero because the former are Pinter in evoking humour or a mixture of mirth and menace in always privileged with some information that those on stage their respective works. In Soyinka’s play, parody, irony, may not possess. As a result of this, the audience are able to invective, and exaggeration have been considered as dramatic sit back and laugh at the mistakes of the actors. This is the techniques that have been deftly employed by the playwright laughter that Aristotle refers to as being “painless”. The to evoke laughter. In the case of The Caretaker, irony, painless aspect of the laughter does not, however, take away repetition, repartee, and farce have been examined as some its bite of criticism. J. L. Styan in The Dark Comedy also of the techniques used by Pinter to create mirth and menace agrees, to some extent, with Aristotle’s definition of comedy. To in his play. Styan, what induces humour in comedy is “a sense of incongruity with a resulting release of tension.”(Styan, 2 Definitions, Nature, and Role of Comedy and 1968:42) The incongruity in this context refers to the discrepancy between appearance and reality in the world of Tragedy comedy. What is important in Styan’s definition is the release In The Poetics, Aristotle observes that comedy is: of tension through humour. Sometimes, however, laughter and smiles are stifled completely in the world of comedy. Thus, … an imitation of those who are whereas farce may engender roars of laughter among the worse than ourselves, yet not in audience, dark comedy may produce suppressed smiles every sort of evil but only in that among theatre-goers. Regardless of the fact that ridicule and baseness of which the ridiculous is a the release of tension occupy a central position in these two species. For the laughable is a sort definitions of comedy, Nellie McCaslin is also of the view that of fault and deformity that is painless there is yet another important dimension of comedy that is and not deadly, pain (Aristotle, essential to its understanding. In Creative Drama in the 1940:74). Classroom, McCaslin defines comedy as: … a play that ends satisfactorily for the hero or the heroine. Comedy may be funny, but _________________________ this is not essential according to this definition. Many comedies are serious and Confidence Gbolo Sanka satiric (McCaslin, 1990:160). Department of English, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Thus, the dimension that McCaslin adds to the understanding Email: [email protected] of comedy is the observation that comedy usually ends well Cecilia Addei for the hero or heroine. There need not necessarily be roars Centre for Communication and Entrepreneurship Skills of laughter in comedy. What is essential is that there is poetic (CENCES), University of Mines and Technology justice at the end of the play. In Shakespeare’s Much Ado (UMaT), Ghana. Email: [email protected] About Nothing, Pedro’s effort is crowned with a successful 20 IJSTR©2013 www.ijstr.org INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC & TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH VOLUME 2, ISSUE 9, SEPTEMBER 2013 ISSN 2277-8616 marriage between Claudio and Hero whereas Don John’s bad The act of telling a joke forces everyone within earshot to deeds are exposed. There is no such poetic justice in Hamlet become embroiled in the event. There cannot be any neutral where the audience feel that the tragic hero deserves a better position. This is simply because to listen to a joke is to take a fate in the play. All the preceding features of comedy put it in position in one way or the other. The third party audience is sharp contrast with tragedy. Thus, while Aristotle is of the view obliged to take sides in the conflict between the joke-teller and that comedy concerns itself with the ridiculous in order to the victim of the joke. To laugh is to ally oneself with the produce painless laughter, he observes that tragedy is the aggressor; to refuse to laugh is to ally oneself with the victim. enactment of an “action that is serious and complete and has To do either of the two is to criticise already, and when the sufficient size” (Aristotle, 1940:76). The aim of tragedy is to audience laugh, it means that they approve the joke the “excite pity and fear, bringing out the catharsis of such dramatist makes about his actors. If the audience fail to laugh, emotions”(Aristotle, 1940:76). Besides, while comedy it means that they do not approve the joke and rather impersonates people who are worse than us, tragedy imitates sympathise with the victim of the joke who, in this context, may people of high moral integrity whose punishment is often be our protagonist. In short, humour in comedy functions like incommensurate with the mistakes they make. This is what jokes and is therefore capable of constructive criticism. excites pity and fear from the audience. In his essay entitled On the Composition of Comedies and Tragedies, Cinthio 3 Form and Themes of the Two Plays summarises the difference between comedy and tragedy by The Trials of Bother Jero is a farcical play. According to observing that: Cuddon, the main objective of farce is to “provoke mirth of the simplest and most basic kind: roars of laughter rather than …comedy is without terror and smiles. It is a matter, therefore, of humour rather than without commiseration (because in it wit”(Cuddon, 1977:307). It is this aspect of mirth that Abrams there are no deaths or terrible refers to when he also defines farce as a “type of comedy chances, but instead it seeks to designed to provoke the audience to simple, hearty laughter bring about its end with pleasure and “belly laughs,” in the parlance of the theatre”(Abrams, with some pleasing saying), and 2005:40). Soyinka evokes mirth in the play by placing Jero, a tragedy, whether it has …morals highly caricatured character, in improbable situations that (Cinthio, 1940:252). make him act in a very ludicrous manner for the audience to laugh. The presence of the other elements of farce such as This explanation on the difference between comedy and exaggerated physical action, exaggeration of character and tragedy is condensed to a question of spiritual conflict situation, and the subservience of dialogue and character to (tragedy) or social complication (comedy) by George plot and situation are further pointers to the fact that we are Sampson in The Concise Cambridge History of English dealing with low comedy in the play. The theme of the play is Literature. Notwithstanding the fact that the definitions and centred on false religiosity. This theme is developed through nature of comedy and tragedy are quite distinct, the two Jero’s conception of the church and the duty of the clergy. To genres of drama converge at a point. They both have one Jero, the church is a form of business venture where one has primary objective; the correction of the ills of society and the to rely on false prophecies, trickery, and lies in order to extort weaknesses in man. This partly explains why Cinthio argues money from the congregation and the society at large. Jero that “tragedy and comedy have their end in common because does not only deceive his congregation that he sleeps at the both endeavour to introduce good morals” (Cinthio, prayer camp at the beach, but also makes Chume believe that 1940:252). It is the manner through which the two genres it is religiously inappropriate for the latter to beat his wife. Jero edify man and society that differs completely.