Bernice Bobs Her Hair Analysis

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“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” is a coming of age satirical story, in which social standing is the paramount of society. The author F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts a bold image of the central themes in American youth: competition, jealousy and betrayal, and does so by narrating this story with dry humor, conspicuous irony and extravagant hyperbole. Fitzgerald’s serious tone throughout the story increases the comicality for us. He describes his characters with very admirable traits, and then exploits them in their dialogues with each other; his emotionless tone brings out their individual personalities. One example of his deadpanning can be found when he describes G. Reece Stoddard, “over whose bureau hangs a Harvard law diploma”. The boys in this story are described as very scholarly, and it makes their ludicrous judgments later seem hilariously outrageous for people who should be smart. When Bernice becomes popular and at one point makes a joke of issuing passes, like everyone else, G. Reece Stoddard changes his opinion towards her very quickly and flatters her, saying, “I’ll have a box.” At the same time, Fitzgerald’s witty tone makes the whole story funnier and explains how important popularity is to the characters: even the people who are supposedly intelligent think of it so highly that they can’t see themselves being manipulated. The story of Bernice contains all three types of irony to reveal how silly the characters’ actions are, even though they are described