Misanthrope Essay Rin Sone

"Thoughtful Laughter" which George Meredith describes as necessary in true comedy arise because of comedies' closeness to real life. In Moliere's The Misanthrope, "thoughtful laughter" is found to not only cause a laugh and lure audience to consider their actions, but also to criticize the real life society using the pondering of audience. Most obvious of these cause of laughter is found around actions of Alceste, main character of the story.

In The Misanthrope, Alceste believes that honesty and integrity are two attributes of people that are supreme to all other attributes, and believes society is corrupt because the people of it lacks these attributes. Because of this belief, Alcete's actions are too honest from his heart that they cause conflict with other character's ideas, and therefore cause laughter in audience by him being "unintentionally" a crown. For example, he openly shows distaste to Oronte's poem in the scene where Oronte recited to Alceste. Alceste is honestly commenting on it, saying what he thought from his heart --- but no one likes someone who denounce his work without hesitation. This ridiculous action cause a laughter in the audience, but one might think, "should we be laughing at Alceste?" Alceste's actions work as a comedy only because of human nature that tends to look minority ideas as ridiculous ones. Moliere criticize discriminating nature of human and society by emphasizing the ridicule against honesty through Alceste, a character that is at the extreme of honesty.

Another of "thoughtful laughter" lies in actions which Alceste describes as "flirting" or "dishonest behavior" of other characters --- which, in fact, is a normal greeting and praising to others. The laughter is made because audience of the play believes Alceste is taking actions of others in wrong way. Yet, one might remember that he or she had once praised someone when in heart was despising the one... simply because that one was a guest or host, or because the location was at so called "formal" place. Alceste's attitude toward these actions make these dishonest daily actions visible and mark them as unacceptable.

In the end, Alceste is pictured as dishonest hypocrite. The effect of it becomes extravagant and ironic because of his prior actions that denounced dishonesty and hypocracy.