Laughter is the Best Medicine Summary B.Ed First Year

Dick Gregory/American comedian, vegetarian and civil rights activist.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

Brief Summary:

The essayist states that laughter is the best medicine to cure physical, mental and psychological pains and problems. So, it can be supportive and effective as a problem and pain solver. In many cases, it is effective and operative as a pain killer as well, but in the case of tragedies and death it cannot be healing and consoling. Laughter can work when a person has calm and peace mind, and when he or she is happy. In the state of peace, calm and happiness, it can be healthy and productive. But it can create adverse effects when people have troubles. So, it can be counterproductive and unhealthy in some situations like: when a person has no food and money, when children are starving, when there is poverty and monetary problem, when there is death of someone, when someone has mental problem, etc. Here, by taking the reference of Dick Gregory’s autobiography, the essayist sympathizes him for his troubles because he is Black, so he had to tolerate racial discriminations. His mother had suggested him to laugh every time to get out of his problems.  So, he laughed in most of his cases. He laughed when he made jokes with kids, and when kids tormented him a lot. Similarly, he laughed when the police troubled him. During the Civil Rights Movements, he used jokes instead of violence to overcome the police. But he came to know that during the time of poverty and monetary problem, it cannot heal any wound. The essayist talks about Dick’s another plight, i.e., his son’s death due to overnight pneumonia. In this situation, his laughter and jokes didn’t heal and console him. Anyway, he used humour to come out from the tragedy. He took laughter as a good form of therapy because he thought that it makes people happy in several situations. But he knew that it cannot be helpful in disastrous situations. Anyway, through the reference of Dick Gregory the essayist comes to the conclusion that laughter is the best solution than crying to come out of problems and pains.