Laughter and the Law of the Third

Of all the creatures on this planet, only humans laugh, because only humans see patterns and thus anticipate or predict trends and outcomes. When their predictions are unexpectedly overthrown by something that doesn't fit a pattern they have perceived, they react to this out-of-jointness—sometimes, if the incongruity causes suffering, by weeping at the “tragedy,” but other times, when the interruption is merely ridiculous or embarrassing, by laughing at the “comedy.” 

This very human response is a kind of acknowledgement of our own failure, our own detachment from reality, our own separation from the universe--which would make no assumptions about either patterns or interruptions thereto. The universe cannot be surprised, since it cannot detach itself from itself in order to see what's going on. But humans are "out of it" and when "it" doesn't behave according to our expectation, we either weep—or, more frequently, I think, laugh. And we laugh—we cannot help it—at how inescapably preposterous something or someone is—and by extension, how absurd everything, including homo sapiens itself, is.

Masters of comedy have many tricks for provoking laughter—and this heightened awareness of the “nonsense of things.” In my reading and teaching, I have noted, though, that almost all comic writers have a particular fondness for what I call the “law of the third.” 

Such writers (let us take Jane Austen, for example) create, in all apparent innocence, a thematic pattern—by citing at least two elements belonging to a single category of human experience. In Pride and Prejudice, for instance, Elizabeth Bennet blandly observes that Charlotte Collins seems content with “her home, her housekeeping, her parish”—all admirable concerns that lead the reader to expect a final element of approbation and esteem. But instead, Elizabeth ends her enumeration with “and her poultry.” This incongruous “third” (actually “fourth”) element—from a quite different and more trivial realm of experience—surprises us, and in making us laugh, overturns our assumption, formed by the pattern of the preceding elements, that Elizabeth approves unreservedly of her friend’s current status and occupations. 

This “law of the third” might also be termed the “absurd third.” It is my favorite device in comic writing, especially when I am doing the writing. Probably because it is so easy, so enjoyable —and so nasty.