We’ve all heard of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, but most people don’t take the time to ask themselves what their favourite flashback story is. What this means is that in the 19 chapters of the story, many of them include the characters seeing things that trigger a flashback. In the story, the three men are going camping, but with no destination planned. This leads to them going places they would never have expected to be, which also made them suddenly recall memories. One of my favourite memories in this book is in Chapter 8, the one with the German professor. What happened was that when J. and Harris decided to go to a show, J. remembered when he went to a show a long time ago, and the incident with the German Professor. His name is Herr Slossen Boschen and he was singing a tragic love song. In the crowd, only two people knew German so they decided to pull a prank. They told the crowd that it was a funny song and that it was super comedious. Of course, everyone believed them, so as he sang, everybody laughed. It took a while for them to realize what the two people did. By then, the German Professor had stormed off super angrily. The chapter ends with J. talking about how he never really approached concerts like this anymore.
The story is funny because of how unrealistic it was yet could still happen in real life. Just imagine a crowd, the whole audience, all believing two people who claim what the song is. How ridiculous is that? Why would someone change their reaction to a song based on someone else's statement? However, this could definitely happen in real life because people don’t want to be rude, so they just listen to what people who actually have experience with the language do. This is something that could definitely be experienced in real life. Just thinking about it seems ridiculous but to be honest, it’s really relatable. It makes sense that the audience immediately believes what the German people say since they had no idea these people had a cruel joke planned. Of course, this could seem disrespectful for the German Professor, and the funnier part was that he was singing the complete opposite of how the audience reacted. If we think about it, the two people only decided to say that it was comedy because laughter is the one thing that Herr Slossen Boschen didn’t want as a reaction. It’s hilarious, because of how sly the two people did it. The audience was no help either since they were completely gullible. This situation could happen, but most probably wouldn’t.
When we think about this chapter, we can think of many different perspectives this situation could be viewed. In this situation, all of the perspectives are very different from one another. The audience had a rather embarrassed perspective. They were completely fooled by two people and this resulted in them completely disrespecting someone who is a potential great singer. This is very embarrassing for them since they practically humiliated someone without meaning to do so just because of a prank. They also probably felt confused at first as to why Herr Slossen Boschen was very angry since they didn’t know that it wasn’t supposed to be a funny song until a while later, because it took them some time to understand the situation. The two German students’ perspective was more positive. They had just succeeded in playing a prank on a whole entire crowd of audience, and they felt the accomplishment of getting away with it. They left before the audience could realize what was going on, which was also a smart move since no one was able to track them. They were pretty happy about this and even if they felt any remorse for the singer, it would have been a very small amount. The singer however feels completely different. He is heartbroken that everyone disrespected his song, and felt so humiliated that he ran off the stage. Imagine being in his position, and just being completely neglected by the crowd. He clearly thought that people were laughing at him because of his bad singing, but since they never really communicated this, he didn’t know why they were laughing. It is funny and interesting that there are so many different perspectives in this story.
The story also had many misunderstandings which were hilarious because of how differently the people thought of one thing. Since J. was informed that Herr Slossen Boschen was singing a comedy song, he actually requested him to sing it in english so that everyone could understand. However, Herr thought that J. was mocking his song by saying that he sounded funny, so he got very upset. J. thought that Herr was singing a funny song, since that was what he was informed. It’s funny seeing the two talking about completely different things and interpreting something way differently than each other. They were both confused and completely annoyed at each other because they were informed of different things. The audience and Herr also had a really funny misunderstanding because he thought that they were laughing at his song. However, they didn’t mean that at all since they thought he was singing a funny song so they just wanted to encourage them. It’s amusing that the audience was so confused as to why he seemed so mad that they were supporting his song. All because of a little prank, many misunderstandings were made, and although that might not really be funny in real life, it was described in a very funny way in the story. Just because this situation could actually be serious if it happens to important people, this is just a memory from a while ago, and if we think about it, these misunderstandings are actually really funny.
In the story Three Men in a Boat, there were many flashback stories, and I believe the best and funniest one out of them is the one with the German Professor. The stories are all funny in some way, depending on one’s sense of humour, but the one with the German Professor could be viewed as funny and interesting in all viewpoints. This story includes misunderstandings and different people’s reactions towards the same situation. It is fascinating to see how different people think of the same situation because we can fully understand the situation this way. Also, the prank that the two German people played on the audience was honestly pretty ingenious. They thought of something that was able to fool everyone and that’s kind of unrealistic yet possible at the same time. People might think that this situation should be viewed as sad and not interesting or funny because they feel bad for Herr. However, when we read the chapter, we can see that he was not too badly hurt and was just mad that no one seemed to appreciate his song. We know that this is not the case, so it is actually interesting and funny to see how different people seemed to feel about this situation. For all these reasons, I believe that the chapter with the funniest and most interesting flashback story is the one with the German Professor.
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