Use of Humor in Two Novels

Paper Summary:

Analysis and comparison of Samuel Beckett's WATT and Vladimir Nabokov's LOLITA. Both authors use of comedy and playfulness; their skillful story-telling. Beckett's philosophical ideas on futility to understand the world. Nabokov's use of the power of narrative art. Comic approach as a strategy used by both novelists to convey their ideas. Gives examples from the novels.

From the Paper:

"If Samuel Beckett's Watt and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita were not so funny they could not be half as serious as they are about the objects they parody. The points they make--the former about philosophy, the latter about art--are painful enough even when the authors engage in a playful game of taking forms of discourse to 'logical' conclusions that are unwelcome to those who depend on these forms to make sense of the world. Beckett addresses the futility of human philosophical and theological attempts to understand the world with something as paltry as human reason and Watt's sad schizophrenia is the medium in which such attempts are parodied. Nabokov does much the same thing for the power of narrative art by persuading readers, against their will, to be gripped by--and sometimes even sympathetic to--a story told by a lying, self-deceiving, brutal child-molester simply through the..."

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