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Dave Barry Big Pond In The Sky Analysis

732 Words3 Pages

EA #5 Literary Analysis
“...Scooter had passed on to that Big Pond in the Sky, and I’d bury him in the garden, where he’d decompose and become food for the zucchini, which in turn would be eaten by my dad…” (SpringBoard 253). Dave Barry is an author of a short story, “I’ve got a few pet peeves about sea creatures,” which is about his previous and current pets. He uses many elements of humor to convey one of many themes in the story. Dave Barry’s story uses comic characters, hyperboles, and comic situation to convey a theme in his story; life is complicated, but in some case, enjoy it.
Barry’s first way of conveying the theme is with comic characters. When Barry was looking for a perfect fish for his 4-year old daughter, Sophie, he finds aggressive …show more content…

In this case, Sophie finds a beetle, naming it Marvin and she keeps it as a pet. However, to prevent his daughter from being upset, from the beetle’s death, Barry, ”... [replaced] Marvin with a parade of stands-ins of various size (‘Look! Marvin has grown bigger!’ ‘Wow! Today Marvin has grown smaller!’)” (SpringBoard 253). This quote explains that Marvin has to be replaced, making Dave do tedious actions to make Sophie happy. This supports the theme because he uses a situation or a problem, that rarely happens and conveys the theme by having to do hard work, but getting payed off at the end. Furthermore, when Barry’s pet turtle, Scooter, died, he says, “...Scooter had passed on to that Big Pond in the Sky, and I’d bury him in the garden, where he’d decompose and become food for the zucchini, which in turn would be eaten by my dad…” (SpringBoard 253). This quote also supports the theme because Barry uses over exaggerated situation to convey his theme. This is because Barry have this funny situation and he was frustrated. As a result, Barry uses comic situation to convey the theme; life is complicated, but in some case, enjoy it.
Using comic situation, examples of hyperbole and comic situation, Dave was able to write a short, funny story and conveys the theme that life is complicated, but in some case, to enjoy it. Did Barry do a good job using humor, to convey a theme in his story? He uses the elements of humor correctly and makes his story

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