On Thursday, when my group and I went over what the significance of the Shaggy Dog Stories of the string walking into a bar was that there is a comparison to the other stories, specifically Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs, because there is a continuous use of the number three. Goldilocks tries things three times before finding the perfect choice, the wolf tries to blow down all three of the pigs home down, and the string goes up to the bar three times to try to get a drink.
For these stories you need background information, because of the fact that there is always a punch line and unless you have background knowledge you will not find the punchline funny at the very end. For instance, since during class we had specifically focused on the string walking into a bar story, the punch line at the end is the string saying "I'm a frayed knot" which if you read the story out loud is suppose to sound like "I'm afraid not", but what is important is that you know that a string will become a frayed knot.
The last thing my group and I had realized with our analysis is most of the time you have to read these stories out loud to hear the punch line and understand the joke. I did not understand two of the stories at first because I had read them to myself, but once I said out loud I knew perfectly what the author was trying to say for the majority of them.
Some questions I may ask are "Where is the author getting the pun for the stories from?" or "Was it easy to understand where the author was going with the story?". The features for our analysis were that there was a significance with the number three, and that you needed background knowledge to understand the jokes, I wonder what other people will pick up as they read The Shaggy Dog Stories?
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