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The Theme Of Death In Woody Allen's 'Death Knocks'

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Whether you are wealthy, poor, healthy or ill, there is something all human must face. That is, death. Death is almost always seen as a taboo and sorrowful subject, but in Woody Allen’s play, “Death Knocks”, death is defamiliarized and made into a comedy. This essay will look over how death is turned into a buffoon, how the protagonist lacks respect towards death and how the protagonist cheated death. To begin with, in “Death Knocks”, death is pictured as a buffon. Throughout the play, he is very clumsy and dull. “He huffs audibly and trips over the windowsill and falls into the room” (Allen, 1052). This quote shows how dull and clumsy death is. Also, when death fumbles through his pocket to finally pull out a card with the address of Nat on it, that showed how unorganized he is. The reason why this explain how death is defamiliarized into comedy can be explained through the incongruity theory of humor. As most of the people expect death to be a elegant, serious and smart or even give a hostile feeling, Allen projects the image of death as the exact opposite. The theory of incongruity explains that we find a link between two things that we usually put in seperate compartments of our mind. The play turned into a comedy when we opened up to the possibility that death might not be what we expect it to be. Death could be friendly and nice. Thus, because of the incongruity that death is actually a buffon instead of a serious person, death is turned into a figure of

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