Blog 2: The Shaggy Dog Stories

The Shaggy Dog Stories were interesting. I never had a reading assigned in college that I found as fun as this. The humor was right up my alley!

1. After reading all of the Shaggy Dog Stories, I realized that each contained a pun that didn’t occur until the end of the piece. For example, in the third tale about the “hard working string” who just wants a beer but is faced with the discrimination of multiple bartenders who “don’t serve strings,” the final line is, “I’m a frayed knot.” After the first story, the reader is left anticipating the punchline of each story and, in my case, even trying to guess it before it was revealed! That leads me to a second feature of the stories, the sense of anticipation that is created. It was not as apparent in the first passage, about the friars, but once the second piece, about the panda, followed the same suit, there was a thrill in waiting for the humor in each story to be uncovered.

2. In order to “get the joke” of the Shaggy Dog Stories, the reader would have to read the passages carefully or he or she might miss the joke altogether! For example, in the first story, the last line being, “Only Hugh can prevent florist friars,” the joke, if read too fast or taken too literally, wouldn’t be a joke at all. It would just be an ordinary, yet strange, sentence. In addition, he or she would need an understanding of the American cultural phrases used within them. For instance, if someone from another country who can read English well, but doesn’t know the popular phrases used in it would not understand the humor of the fourth story’s “Thank Friday, it’s God!” Without the knowledge of the commonly used “Thank God it’s Friday,” the joke would not have the same resonance.

3. To be honest, the Shaggy Dog Stories most accurately coincide with the telling of any joke, setting up a situation to end in a punchline that evokes a comical response from the audience. Also, each passage had a punchline of its own that stood out for different reasons. The first tale ended in “Only Hugh can prevent florist friars,” which is, what I have heard it phrased, a mad gab, where one has to say a phrase over and over again until its true meaning is revealed. It also features a cultural reference to our ol’ pal Smokey the Bear reminding us that, “Only you can prevent forest fires!” The second passage ended in, "Giant panda, lives in China, eats shoots and leaves,” which is mistaking words for their homographs and taking a set of words literally as the panda did in his merciless homicide at the restaurant! The third piece ended in the phrase, “Nope, I'm a frayed knot,” which was a pun and homophonic phrase to the term “I’m afraid not.” The fourth story ends in, “Thank Friday! It’s God,” which is a play on the term, “Thank God it’s Friday.” Lastly, the final tale ended in, "Would you believe a lawyer who told you the Czech was in the male,” which is a combination of homophonic phrase and a cultural reference of lawyers being particularly miserly with money. Each story uniquely used different literary devices to get its point, or joke, across.

4. Each piece presented a story that had a problem that ended in a resolution. For example, in the fifth tale, the lawyer’s Czechoslovakian friend gets swallowed by a male bear and once he gets the sheriff to shoot and kill the bear, the officer kills the other female bear because he can’t “believe a lawyer who told [him] the Czech was in the male.” It may not have resolved the lawyer’s problem in an orthodox way, but it worked for the story! Also, as previously mentioned, each story had the element of anticipation for what the punchline would be at the end that kept the reader on his or her toes.