Love Me Not Blog Post #1

You're Ugly, Too by Lorrie Moore

3. This story makes extensive use of jokes. Discuss the importance of jokes to the characterization of Zoë and to the story as a whole.

I absolutely loved this short story. Zoë is hilarious to me and I do want to spend time with her and like be her bff. She is little miss congeniality to me. Her sarcastic sense of humor makes the story and the situations she finds herself in, not less serious, but less of a bigger deal at the time. The author uses the jokes in the story as a defense mechanism for Zoë. When she finds herself in an awkward or uncomfortable situation, she makes a joke about it. In the very beginning of the story, a student asks her what her perfume is and she responds, "room freshener" (Moore 353). She knows that the student is trying to make a joke about her smell, but she responds sarcastically. The use of the student reviews throughout the story are funny too. They are applying the real life reviews of things that her students notice to circumstances that actually happen in her life in a witty and comical way.