English Commentary †James Thurber Essay

James Thurbers Footnote on the future is a first person limit narrative written as an account of the author on the effect of science and the future. The found is written with the aim of entertaining the referee umteen elements in it comedy, colloquial and conversatonal language, irony, personification and unusual vision reflect this merge effect. It is important to remember that although the author criticises scientists, himself and the human race in general, he does so weakly and in an amicable and comical way.The theme of the piece is humour and this is achieved in several ways. One method used by Thurber is to include deliberately implicitly sadistic ideas into the piece. Thurber writes as if he were frustrated when he finds out that neither the sun nor the mind of man is, later on all, going out. This achieves humour because it seems as though Thurber is in opposition to humanity and its future take down though he is a human himself.In addition, amusing and ridiculo us personification is included in the text the mankind is tell to have quit shrinking Thurber wishes that Halleys Comet deals California a glancing backhand blow before it goes careening off the sun-spots spread as said to have been spreading as rapidly as ulcerative gingivitis. irritability is also accomplished by Thurber when he ridicules himself in the opening paragraph of the piece.Whilst attempting to make himself seem important and chiefly intelligent, he implies that information is delievered to him or else than searched by him as shown in the quote word is brought to me. However, following on from this forementioned quote, Thurber reveals that it is his pageboys that deliver information to him. The fact that page boys do not normally deliver information, but sooner deliver wedding go to a priest, implies that Thurber may have mistaken the function of page boys and has therefore ridiculed himself in an attempt to seem intelligent.In terms of content, eccentric imagery is also used to simply achieve the readers attention. Thurber makes the reader to imagine Earth as a flimsy globe and therefore later to imagine it being knocked far into the oblivious Darkness, the incomprehensible ratty. This produces shock to the reader and in fact could be considered as wry as it implies that Thurber does not believe in a religion instead believes that the existence of the universe can be explained through science something that he criticises throughout the piece.Thurber directs some attention to scientists and takes care to use the image of rim watchers of the skies as a stereotype to describe them. Throughout the passage manages to introduce scientists negatively through successfully (in his opinion) disproving Dr. Tilneys theory, describing his frustration in the wishing of certaintiy scientists have when predicting where and when a comet may hit Earth and commenting seemingly ironically that Time magazine is always infallible and. The use of irony is ordinary throughout the piece.He comments that scientists are quite naturally cheerful even though billions of unused brain cells have been detected in the lens cortex of man. Thurber however gives no explanation for why the scientists are joyful. Thurber hike up incorporates irony into the text when he states we were given only a a couple of(prenominal) paltry aeons to prepare our species for the end. As an aeon is considered a stoppage of a billion years, it would be reasonable to think that there would in fact be enough time to be prepared for much(prenominal) a catastrophe Thurber does this purposefully to criticise scientists perception of time.The readers attention is retained through a consistently colloquial and conversational use of language. Thurber refers and converses to the reader in second person when he says the placidity of you may go, you may all file out at once and dont ask me why, it just has. The author also conversationally refers to the theory that man has many unused brain cells as a little menace and chooses to describe his age in 1910 as when he was a stripling of sixteen going on seventeen.