Laughing at our Feet

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Isabela Goulart -9A-

Laughing at our Feet

An essay to show what is comic about the comic short story, ‘Feet’

        “All the other courts are grass, out in the sun; Centre Court is between a science block and the canteen and when there is a Governors’ Meeting the governors use it as a car park.”

        

        Humour in this short story is brought up mainly by its extremely descriptive language, not only to illustrate its characters, but also surroundings and situations. This is a very common tool used by authors in order to captivate the attention of the reader and Jan Mark managed to do so in a very successful way.

        

        The language used is rather simple, but what makes it interesting is the fact that it’s similar to the language we, teenagers, use, especially because the narrator appears to have approximately our age.

        “The sun only shines on Centre Court at noon in June and there is green algae growing round the edges.”

        Jane is a typical adolescent, who is willing to do almost anything, like volunteering to be an umpire at the annual tennis tournament, just so that she could watch Collier, the boy she had a crush on, play. Her dry, sarcastic humour adds on to the fact that we, readers, see ourselves in her character, resulting in a more entertaining reading.  Furthermore, the fact that we can actually see what Jane’s thoughts are makes the story even more comical. An example of this is when she reflects on the idea that her “…voice had gone woolly and…” her “…glasses had steamed over and…” she “…was sure people were laughing, even if they weren’t.

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        However, language is not the only gadget used by writers to create a witty tone in their stories.  Jan Mark, in ‘Feet’, used a couple of other aspects, these including the characters; all of them in his short story are very different from each other and each possesses a distinct characteristic. At the same time that we cannot imagine a teacher who looks like an orangutan in his track suit, we can, due to the fact that his illustrations are so vivid that he manages to bring all of his characters to life.

        “I believe myself that he ...

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