Chapter Twenty-Nine, #3: Thou Shalt Not Laugh at That

Colonel Klink

In Chapter 29, Campbell associates his sense of morality with his sense of humor, when comparing himself to the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann. “The only advantage to me of knowing the difference between right and wrong, as nearly as I can tell,” he writes, “is that I can sometimes laugh when the Eichmanns can see nothing funny” (166). One page later, Eichmann makes a joke about the six million who died in the Holocaust.

Given Campbell’s comment about his ability to laugh when the Eichmanns can see nothing funny, what does Eichmann’s joke say about the relationship between moral sensibility and comic sensibility?