THE INTERACTION OF THE THREE TRADITIONAL HUMOUR THEORIES IN NEIL SIMON’S BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS

Abstract

Humour/laughter is a human entity and activity. It takes place in almost all kinds of social interactions. Most of us cannot help laughing at something funny in our daily routines. Laughter is the fundamental mode of expression common to human beings. From this perspective, Simon is considered one of the most significant playwrights who uses laughter elements skilfully in his works. He is called a “laugh machine". Marvin Neil Simon (1927-2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter, television joke writer, and one of the most popular and successful dramatists commercially and artistically in the history of American theatre. This paper aims to explore how Neil Simon uses three traditional humour/laughter theories: The Superiority Theory, the Incongruity Theory, and the Relief Theory, in his Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983). It is an autobiographical play and one of Simon’s masterpieces in Simon’s BB Trilogy. This play is rich enough to explore three traditional humour theories. It deals with one family’s survival struggle just before the World War II during the Great Depression. It was a time of hardships for millions of people in the late 1930s. While Father makes all decisions, a passive-aggressive mother is self-sacrificing and manipulates his sons. The study adopts the qualitative analysis research method incorporated into analysis of dramatic texts.