This Side of Paradise.

We live in the world of I. The I that is in the context of the self. And the Eye that perceives the context of the world that surrounds you through the filter of the I that is in the context of the self. If this confuses the hell out of you, allow me to simplify….Ego. Self-indulgence. Preoccupation with the personal human condition, and in turn regurgitating it onto all aspects of life.

Amory's vanity and narcissism is more than a character trait; it is an emblem of the theme of "egotism" that pervades Fitzgerald's novel. When Amory says that he is an egotist, he does not simply mean that he is self-absorbed; he is revealing an essential philosophical trait of the novel, which is that the self is all-important. He best expresses this idea in the final chapter of the novel, "The Egotist Becomes a Personage," with statements such as, "This selfishness is not only part of me. It is the most living part." Like many people in his generation feeling cut off from tradition and drastically changed after World War I, Amory comes to think that his self is, in a sense, all that he has.

This idea, which is common in other important modernist texts (such as Ezra Pound's famous magazine, the Egoist), is influenced by Freudian psychology, by the modernist generation's dis-avowal of past traditions, and by the individualism that was important to many writers of the time. Often, however, Fitzgerald is also critical and satirical of Amory's egotism, and he certainly mocks its more superficial form of vanity, a trait that characterizes Amory's youth as well as his first love, Isabelle. The egotism and snobbishness of many aristocrats in the novel is also something that Fitzgerald alternatively ridicules and admires. By the end of the novel, it is not necessarily clear whether Amory fully embraces egotism, although he does seem to recognize its valuable artistic and intellectual aspects.

Fight thee ego.

There is truth...

to every joke.

As the clock ticks, the validity of this statement becomes solid. I believe Freud touches on this in his theories regarding dark comedy and its inner workings.

Dark humor was fueled by the writings of Sigmund Freud whose works accelerated the decentralization of the individual. Freud's emphasis on the once-taboo subject of sexuality and the unconscious provide a solid foundation for black comedy. He was fascinated by this genre. For Freud, dark comedy was a defense mechanism against the inevitability of death.

Dark comedy keeps the viewer off balance with shock effects that are visual, such as the leg protruding from the wood shredder in Fargo and/or auditory, as in Malcolm McDowell's warbling of Gene Kelly's beloved standard "Singin' in the Rain" as he stomps people to death in A Clockwork Orange. Black humor is the only film genre (comic or otherwise) that uses a musical score at cross purposes to the visual. This genre offers conflicting cues to the viewer instead of simply reinforcing the status quo (as for example, violin music would in a romantic comedy).

More controversial is how black humor treats institutions of the establishment such as psychiatry, religion, and the military, which routinely insist that this is a rational world.

Comedy is often used to break down concepts that plague or have plagued mankind. By taking uncomfortable topics and approaching them through means of humor, we are able to gain widespread acceptance of truth.