The Defence Mechanism In Sharpe's Humour

Humour releases the accumulated tension and, in its turn, it serves as a defence mechanism. Sharpe’s humour is an antidote to the disappointment, is the mask used against the anxiety that can create a daily reality; therefore, it is a catharsis. He does not intend to be pedagogical, Sharpe does not preach against human stupidity and incompetence, he only portrays, exposes to public view, like an absurd sovereign that makes our life impossible. His novels of grotesque and wild farce draw intellectual and cultural concerns, although Sharpe never made the step to consider them in another way than as a mockery. During his childhood, he was immunized against big words. No more ‘big words’ for him, despite that big words –love, happiness, sympathy– always beat in his locked inside.
Therefore, Sharpe’s humour is not just a literary technique, although it may seem so, but it is an allegorical vision of life and the world. The difficulties he was encountering in his life seemed so absurd and absorbent that he learned to get rid of them through humour and incongruity. His

We all know what that government meant to Great Britain: the dismantling of the industrial fabric and the benefits that the working class had acquired over time. There could not be two people who were more opposed than Thatcher and Sharpe. Two ways of understanding life that were diametrically opposed. Tom Sharpe fled from a country, his country, which was being transformed into an alien and inhospitable place. That is, he came to Costa Brava in a time of a deep personal and professional crisis, which had led him to excessive drinking and squandering his talent to find an exit that did not come. When he landed at El Prat airport on 20th April 1992 he was a man exhausted, beat, unhappy and confused. He would say to himself, reminding of Yates (his father’s favourite poet), that England was not a country for old