अनुक्रम (Contents)

Use of humour and pathos in the essays of Charles Lamb.

Use of humour and pathos: Essays of Elia is a confluence where the streams of humour and pathos meet each other. Lamb’s essays, broadly speaking, are the representation of life. Like life itself his essays contain both smiles and tears, Lamb lived a life of troubles and trials. He had to sacrifice his own interests and pleasures for the sake of others. In order to take sincere care of his sister suffering from insanity, he decided never to marry himself. His mother had been murdered by his sister in a fit of madness; his brother, John Lamb, had left Charles alone to face the adverse circumstances, but he never lost heart. With such a tense and troublesome life it was almost impossible for him to laugh without tears in his eyes. Whenever he laughed he did “only to save himself from weeping.

Humour in Essays of Lamb

Humour is a very important ingredient in the essays of Lamb. It is not absent even from the essays dealing with serious subjects. Lamb’s humour cannot be separated from his style. Hugh Walker observes : “Lamb’s style is inseparable from his humour of which it is the expression in the quaint words and antique phrases and multiple comparisons. Strip Elia of these and he is nothing.” Lamb creates humour by exaggerating the details.

Some of the essays of Lamb have humorous touches, while some others are full of humour and fun. Though ‘South Sea House’ is a serious kind of essay, it does not lack in humorous touches. While speaking of Thomas Tame and John Tipp, Lamb makes some witty remarks. There is plenty of humour in ‘A Chapter on Ears’. Lamb, in a humorous vein, makes fool of himself and the reader too in ‘All Fools Day’. In ‘The Old and the New Schoolmaster’, he creates humour at his own cost. About his own knowledge of different subjects he says: “I knew less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks standing…..I have no astronomy……of history and chronology. I possess some vague points, such as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscellaneous study, ……”. He makes fun of the schoolmaster for his feeling pleasure in the company of his students rather than with his equals.

Pathos in the Essays of Lamb

As Lamb’s life was a long tale of suffering and heroic struggle against heavy odds, his works, particularly essays, in spite of being humorous could not remain devoid of pathos and seriousness. In his essay ‘Oxford in the Vacation, Lamb deplores his deprivation of university education. In ‘Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago’, there is a very pathetic and heart-touching description of Coleridge, a poor friendless boy. The description goes thus, “I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those who should care for me, were far away. Those few acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon as being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday visits.

A Fine Blend of Humour and Pathos in his Essays : Lamb’s humour is a blend of laughter and tears. It is akin to pathos. Humour was his saving grace. It could detach him from the painful and tragic realities, and enable him to survey the ills of mankind with dispassionate and even artistic instincts which wrought out his emancipation. His humour might now and then take a freakish or dismal turn.O. Elton writes of his earlier pleasantries, such as, the paper on the Inconveniences Resulting from being Hanged as being dismal. He is better represented by the finer shade of perception and sensibility expressing itself in delicate humour, which is rendered in language subtle and perfect. What Caryle describes as ghastly make believe of humour is a gross misjudgement. It is rather drawing a veil over the ghastliness of his experience in life. His humour makes for a sane appraisement of life. He does not jest with life, he cannot, for he has known all that is grim in life, but his humour relieves him of the painfulness and tedium of life.

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