Richard Fleck's Short Story Priscilla And The Wimps

EA 5.1- Analysis of a Humorous Text

In the words of Benjamin Disraeli ,“Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.” The bully at this school is basically running the school and no one is doing anything about it. Until one day a girl stands up to the bully for everyone. Richard Peck’s short story “Priscilla and the Wimps” is a low and high level comedy that uses comic word play, comic situations, and the incongruity theory to engage the reader in a humorous way.

To start of, Peck uses high level comedy in the form of word play to intrigue the reader. The author has just introduced a girl named Priscilla who is the tallest girl in the entire school. She only has one friend and was “sort of above everything” (Peck 344). It was effective in the story not only to tell us that Priscilla didn’t know anything about the school, but to also tell that she is the tallest girl in the school. This high level comedy really adds to the story and will gets a real chuckle out of people.

The school in the story has a gang and they feel like they can do whatever they want to anyone they want. One day a gang member walks up to one of the shortest kids in the school and “grabs little Melvin...slams his head against the locker door…the sound of [his] skull against steel ripples all the way down the hall” (Peck 344). When it isn’t happening in real life, other people’s pain can be hysterical. This is low level humor because anyone could get it. This will get a huge outburst out of the audience who is listening or