LAUGHING AT PEOPLE IN PAIN: DARK (BLACK) HUMOR IN HOWARD BARKER’S THE CASTLE

Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century, writers and scientists in different fields have a great interest in the subject of Black Humor, which is used as a tool to survive. As we have seen in our study, Black Humor is seen as a means both to forget and to cause the others to forget the troubles following great disasters or wars. One of these writers, Howard Barker, in his play The Castle (1985), addresses the state of mankind through Black Humor and criticizes contemporary society with a story in Medieval Europe. The rigid hierarchies of the societies, the terrible massacres of wars, the loss of the united identity, or the shocking effects of modern society are seen ridiculed, acknowledging on the one hand the state of humanity as bleak and confirming the uniqueness of the individual on the other. We encounter one of the most beautiful examples of black humor when a landowner who returns to his home after taking part in a holy war to save to Jerusalem, the holy city of Christianity and Judaism, to see that his land was occupied by a new system of thinking and a new sense of life. The only thing that the reader and the audience can do in this situation is to laugh, because the only defense mechanism against the existing pains is the Black Humor.