Woody Allen's Death Knocks

In Woody Allen’s play, Death Knocks, shows a short story about a dress manufacturer named Nat Ackerman. During one night alone reading before midnight, the man gets a sudden visit by Death, who intends to make a dramatic entrance by entering his bedroom’s window. After the encounter with Death, Nat challenges him to play gin rummy with a condition to gain more time when Nat wins. If not, Nat will willingly leave with Death right away. Despite some hesitations of Death, he finally accepts the contest. At last, game after game, Nat wins. In consequence, he cheats death by winning over the challenge in which he seems confident to succeed. In the play, the subject of death is altered into a humorous comedy. Along with the theories from Munro’s text, the definition of comedy by Bergson, and the method of creating a comic situation from Sigmund

The most compelling evidence is that there are various techniques to produce a humorous context by “mimicry, disguise, unmasking, caricature, parody, travesty and so on” (Freud, 751). Nevertheless, under those circumstances, these ways can be used aggressively depending on how it is use but, “[o]ne can make a person comic in order to make him became contemptible to deprive him of his dignity and authority” (Freud, 751). In Allen’s play, it is obvious that the role of Death can be converted as a parody or travesty by putting him in a comic role. As mentioned in Bergson’s, the laughable comes from something usual, this validates the character of Death in the play. At the end of the scene, He leaves without any money on him because he lost the challenge to Nat, which deny his dignity and authority to Nat. In contrast, Nat has won his dignity and authority, therefore it increases his self-esteem, which result superiority compare to Death, whom is so much degraded by Nat from the start until the end of the