The book is a series of letters between a middle-management demon and his apprentice, with the manager trying to guide the apprentice in winning the soul of a young man. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell. As John Wesley said, Sour godliness is the Devil s religion. We are all familiar with the curative powers of laughter and humor.
Laughter is the best medicine , or so the saying goes.
Dr. and author Bernie Siegel writes, Laughter makes the unbearable bearable and a patient with a well-developed sense of humor has a better chance of recovery than a stolid individual who seldom laughs. Yet humor has other functions as well. Humorous stories, like the parables of Jesus, often have a subverting function. They set up the accustomed flow of history, of the way things are, then suddenly reverse it. We are lured into the expected order of things, and are surprised and delighted when something new breaks in, something that we recognize is more fair and just than the ways things are.