consideration for the rest of the ship’s health he had them boiled with a little seaweed on the side” (14). Noah never took into account that the plovers’ feathers naturally turned white every winter, and decides to bring the species into extinction for the sake of the other animals’ health, or rather his own hunger – a tenderly considerate act. The woodworm continues to criticize Noah’s eating animals of the Ark. Shortly after Noah’s sons “proposed at the family council that if you had the elephant and hippopotamus, you could get by without the behemoth…There were complaints about getting behemoth for dinner every night and so – merely for a change of diet – some other species was sacrificed” (14). The understatement shown downplays the significance of the sacrifice of another animal species as well as the behemoth’s extinction. The woodworm describes another extinct animal, the unicorn, as “strong, honest, fearless, impeccably groomed and a mariner who never knew a moment’s queasiness” (16). When the noble unicorn saves Ham’s wife from falling into the God-damned seas, he received “fine thanks … for his valour” and was “casseroled one Embarkation Sunday” (16). This description of the noble unicorn’s treatment uses overstatement, because the gratitude the unicorn receives seems more of a punishment to the reader. As evidenced in these examples, Barnes uses verbal irony to satirize Noah’s hero status in the Ark story. The use of verbal irony continues throughout the novel, scattered through the chapters. In the third chapter – The Wars of Religion – overstatement is used to prosecute the woodworms, referred to as the “bestioles” (63) – a Latin term for bug or insect. The court case begins with the “Petition des habitans” (62), where the “inhabitants of Mamirolle in the diocese of Besancon … most pressingly and urgently petition the court to relieve and disburden [them] of the felonious intervention … which have brought upon [them] God’s wrath” (62). In this quotation, the inhabitants label the woodworm’s eating of the Bishop’s throne as “felonious intervention” (62)
and request the excommunication of the bestiole population responsible for the “devilish work” (64). Next, the prosecution, “Plaidoyer des habitans,” (62) describes the inhabitants’ victimization, “humble faith,” (63) and “unimpeachable honesty” (63) by saying they are “too trepid of this court to let anything but the clear fountain of truth flow from their mouths” (63). The overstatement used in these quotations satirizes the prosecution. The court moves on to accuse the woodworms by overstating their natural act of eating wood by describing with exclamation the incident in which Besancon’s bishop, Hugo, lowers himself onto the throne only to fall through the undermined wood: “Oh malevolent day! Oh malevolent invaders! And how the Bishop fell … being hurled against his will into a state of imbecility” (64). This quotation only adds to the criticism for the prosecution by parodying the Bishop’s fall. In describing the inhabitants examination of the crime scene, the prosecution says they discovered “in the leg that had tumbled down like the walls of Jericho a vile and unnatural infestation of woodworm” (64) and that the criminals had “secretly and darkly gone about their devlish work, [and] so devoured the leg that the Bishop did fall … from the heavens of light into the darkness of imbecility” (64). Besides overstatement, there is also ironic incongruity when the woodworm’s infestation is described as “unnatural,” because woodworms do naturally infest wood. By the end of the documented trial, “the villager’s successful prosecution of the woodworms who end up being excommunicated … is ironically undercut by the conclusion in which the closing words … have been eaten by the woodworm” (Finney 63). In this chapter Barnes satirizes documented history. Despite the inhabitants’ – the winning party’s – written version of history being the one read, they are portrayed as overly absurd in their attack on the woodworms. Daniel Candel states, “A History [of the World in 10 ½ Chapters] often criticizes the one-way presentation of history [and that] History is presented … as being on the side of the winners and thus not taking cognizance