I'm sure we all remember the scene where Jake is digging worms for fishing while Bill watches out the window on page 118, and Bill, trying to be as comical as possible, ends up singing about irony and pity. The scene starts with Bill being called a lazy bum by Jake for not helping to dig, at which point Bill pops into bed, and says that he never gets up. As soon as Jake mentions food, Bill hops up and jokes that he's getting breakfast, and Jake is working for the common good, encouraging him to have irony and pity. As he goes downstairs, Bill even sings about being ironical and pitiful. As they reach breakfast, Bill continues to pressure Jake to show irony and pity to the waitress endlessly.
All this is meant to be another one of Bill's extensive on-the-spot comedy sketches, and it certainly made me laugh. However, it seems that "ironical and pitiful" are the standards Bill lives up to. Irony exudes from his character in all of his comedic episodes. He uses it as his main tool, as do most amateur comics. More evident in this scene is they way he is utterly pitiful. Right from the start, as Bill makes a jovial attempt to stay in bed, his jokes can be described as little more than pitiful. At no point in this entire scene could I imagine Jake laughing without shaking his head in embarrassment or pity for Bill's desperate attempts at humor. They way Bill changes from pulling the covers up above his head to racing down for food at the drop of a hat is one of the purest examples of humor through portraying yourself as pitifully as possible that I have ever seen, and if that's not enough, he risks an excessive amount of strange looks from bystanders as he sings pitifully on the way to breakfast.
Most clearly demonstrating Bill's pitiful attitude towards comedy is when he practically begs Jake to joke with him. Jake only put in a sensible amount of effort: enough to prompt Bill's next response. Meanwhile, Bill was becoming the very definition of pitiful with his begging and pressuring of Jake. This in itself is pitiful enough, but then Bill presents himself as an irony expert; almost nothing is more pitiful than an expert insisting and pleading that someone else try to match his expertise.
Considering that Bill was as pitiful as he could have been, he made a seemingly out of place connection between himself and Cohn when Jake offered Robert Cohn as something pitiful, and Bill says that wasn't a bad attempt. Bill and Cohn are pitiful characters, but Bill failed to differentiate between his and Cohn's brand of pity. Bill was plainly being pitiful on purpose; everything pitiful thing he did in this scene was purposeful. Cohn, on the other hand, was naturally pitiful. He didn't have to try to look the part. The important difference is humor. Cohn is serious. He's too serious to be likable to most readers, but Bill is funny. As stupid as he looks, Bill makes people laugh, and that makes his character likable. This is a further comment on Cohn. His problem isn't that he is pitiful, rather that he can't use that pity to his advantage.
I agree that Bill's relationship with Jake is mostly a comedic one. But I feel like most of the time it isn't forced. I feel that Bill's constant need to joke could be pitiful, and I like the idea that he is almost as pitiful as Cohn, he just shows it in a different way.
ReplyDeleteIt is definitely possible that Bill's comedic relationship with Jake could be a little pitiful. However, I don't think that Jake sees it that way. He doesn't view the was Bill is acting as ridiculous and I don't think he thinks Bill is being desperate for humor. The main reason I think this is because when Bill stops Jake tries to get him to continue which is not something you would do if you found what someone was doing embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there are elements to Bill's attempts at humor around Jake that are like a dog trying to play with his master. However, based on what we see of Bill's relationship with Jake it is on much more equal terms with Jake -- is Jake just as pathetic, or does this make Bill seem less pathetic? Either way there is certainly something fake about Bill's jokes.
ReplyDeleteA lot of comments are saying that Bill isn't pitiful, he's just comedic. I think they aren't mutually exclusive: Yeah, Bill is embarrassing himself and singing at the top of his lungs, but as we've seen before, Jake loves to just let him go. Like the taxidermied dog scene in Paris, he tries to act the "straight man" but Bill's ability to run a joke into the ground is still funny, if a little ironical, pitiful, and embarrassing. (They're such cool guys, they shouldn't care who thinks they're embarrassing themselves.)
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