Humor in Edgar Allan Poes Some Words With a Mummy Essay

Humor in Edgar Allan Poes Some Words With a Mummy - Essay ExampleA symposium having wearied him into a dozy headache, the narrator resolves to go to bed early with just a mouthful of supper. The mouthful proves a gargantuan one, consisting of four-spot or five pounds of Welsh rabbit and at least five bottles of Brown Stout. The narrator drolly insists that afterwards this frugal meal he went to bed hoping to sleep till noon the next day. Quite obscure from the intention of entertaining the reader with his wit, the narrator probably also wishes to suggest that the ensuing story could stupefy been a dream engendered by the extraordinary evening meal and his state of unusual weariness.The narrator wittily complains that ere he had completed his third snore he was awakened by the doorbell and was given an urgent message from his mate Dr Ponnonner. The doctor had secured permission from the Directors of the City Museum to open and examine a mummy, and he invited his friend to the e xamination at eleven, that evening at his house. Excited and ecstatic, overthrowing all told in my way, dressing himself with a rapidity truly marvellous, the narrator set off, at the top of his speed, to the doctors.An eager party of scientists and historians stand up around Dr Ponnonners dining table, on which the mummy had been placed, eagerly awaited the narrator. The outer box was opened to tell hieroglyphical characters-probably the mummys name. The narrator records, tongue-in-cheek, that these were translated by Mr Gliddon to represent the word Alla wrongdoingo. Not one of the assembled party of scholars comments on the irritation of this appellation. The narrator, however, seems confident that the lay reader of his story will get the joke, for he does not make the mistake of underscoring the obvious. This is, doubtless, a dig at the blinkered vision of the new trend of specialist scholars.The puerility of the scholars is again highlighted in their idiotic experiment of i ntroducing electrical current to the mummys body (about one-tenth in earnest and nine-tenths in jest) and their fright at the first unexpected reaction to it. The narrator calls attention to the fact that the mummys open eyes were now half- closed. He was not alarmed by this occurrence, he says, but he admits that were it not for the five bottles of Brown stout he had consumed, he might have been a little nervous.As for his scholarly friends,they really made no attempt at concealing the downright fright which have them. Doctor Ponnonner was a man to be pitied. Mr. Gliddon, by some peculiar process, rendered himself invisible. Mr. Silk Buckingham, I fancy, will hardly be so bold as to deny that he made his way, upon all fours, under the table.With all the stupidity of scholarship, they continue their juvenile researches after the initial shock. They now apply the electric current to the spacious toe of the mummys right foot. The mummys immediate reflex bestowed a sturdy kick on D r Ponnonner, discharging that gentleman, like an pointer from a catapult, through a window into the street below. The doctors friends mournfully go down to collect his iron remains but Ponnonner himself rushing up in an unaccountable hurry, brimful of the most ardent school of thought, meets them on the way, eager as ever to continue the experiment. Dr Ponnonner now takes