First Encounter with Dark Comedy

Jonathan Swifts "A Modest Proposal" was my first encounter with dark comedy my junior year of high school in one of my English classes. We were using the "Norton Sampler" and had to analyze the story as one of our first assignments. I remember reading it for the first time with a sort of grimace consisting purely of curiosity broken up by small grunts of laughter. At the time the only way I knew how to describe it was in terms of irony but I was didn't realize my laughter at such ominous ironic statements was really due to the darkly comedic asertions. I didn't know then of Dark Comedy as a type of literature or entertainment. In reading "A Modest Proposal" was a great introduction to dark comedy for me. It is riddled with carefully crafted satire but isn't too deeply complicated and can be brokendown into managable pieces for simple disection. It impacted me because it shed light for the first time on a different side of comedy that I could never quite sum up. Dark comedy allowed me to see that there can be comedy in any situation and that even the most absurd and sometimes tragic events can actually be humorous without any intent of being malicous. My relationship today with dark comedy is much more prevalent now that I have had more time to explore its odds and ends through many forms ( i.e. movies, books, plays, tv shows etc.) and have seen how it can contribute to literature and culture. I love dark comedy as it doesn't let you become lulled into a sense of false security or self imposed naivity. It harasses and prods you to see the more comic and capricious side of tragedy.