HUMOUR IN CHUKWUEMEKA IKE’S TOADS FOR SUPPER

Abstract

Chukwuemeka Ike as a fictional writer displays a mature sense of skilfulness in providing comfort for incommodious and turbulent situations through the use of humour in writing. This paper is an attempt at a philosophical exposé on the sense of humour in Chukwuemeka Ike’s maiden novel, Toads for Supper. Ike’s novel bears out Charles Nnolim’s Latin aphorism ridentem dicere verum, meaning, I tell the truth laughing. Thus, humour, which some philosophers regard variously as illogical, nonsensical and lack of seriousness, can be understood differently from another perspective which tries to make ‘sense’ of the ‘nonsense’ and forces a ‘new logic’ unto the ‘illogical’, through its soothing effects. In Toads for Supper, the use of humour helps to communicate hard facts in its diluted form, enlivening serious situations with comic relief. There may be various explanations to why humans laugh. Ike’s work here sets the stage for answers to questions about the scandal of humour; that is, the fact that the many theories of humour have not yet ascertained what really makes humour amusing, what makes things funny and what makes people laugh. The hope (or lack of it) to get to this point of awareness has been dismissed as a mere philosophers’ dream, a kind of philosophical gelotology.