Brit/barry-discussion - Essay Example

Exaggeration The essays of Britt and Barry have a lot of in common as they both compare different people`s qualities in order to mock them. However, each essay has its particular style. Britt`s style is more non-formal, bitter, and provoking. She portrays fat people in some kind of magical way, as those who feel and understand more than skinny. Barry`s style is very comforting, he does not use satire but is more ironical in exaggerating differences between men and women.Both authors use exaggeration as a core of their humor.

Barry is taking some external objects or events, such as dirt and sports and by exaggerating attitude to them of both sexes is making it funny. Dirt in perception of men and women turns out to be completely different:“I mean, when I hear the word "filthy" used to describe a bathroom, I think about this bar where I used to hang out called Joes Sportsmans Lounge, where the mens room had bacteria you could enter in a rodeo” (Barry).Britt is also taking fat people and is comparing their fat to some good, some reserve of positive.

Laziness of fat people is exaggerated to stability and even to some supreme knowledge of universal things:“ They (fat) know very well that God is not in his heaven and all is not right with the world. If God was up there, fat people could have two doughnuts and a big orange drink anytime they wanted it” (Britt). From this story it seems that skinny people bustle, believe in logic, order, value time because they are superficial which is absolutely absurd. Exaggeration is funny because it is universal, it is very simple, and it is not real.

Children learn to exaggerate things at a very young age. Maybe, exaggerating things people try to imagine the most absurd results and feel relief that this cannot happen to them. Works CitedBarry, D. “Batting clean-up and striking out”. Retrieved from: http://behlereng.weebly.com/uploads/3/7/1/2/37120699/battingclean-upandstrikingout.pdfBrit, J. “That Lean and Hungry Look”. Retrieved from: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sujith/lhl.html