2013-09-13
Explanation
This single-panel comic is captioned "A good grasp of literature is valuable in any profession." A woman asks a doctor, "How did my husband'''s surgery go?" The doctor, wearing a white coat and sunglasses, replies: "Well, the good news is that all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
The doctor is quoting Edgar Allan Poe'''s 1849 poem "A Dream Within a Dream," which meditates on the elusive nature of reality and whether anything we experience is truly real. By using this quote as his response to a straightforward medical question, the doctor is employing literary allusion in the worst possible context. The implication is devastating: the surgery clearly did not go well, and the doctor is using Poe'''s dreamy philosophical language as a poetic way to avoid delivering bad news. The "good news" framing makes it even funnier, because the only silver lining he can offer is that reality itself might be an illusion, so perhaps the botched surgery does not ultimately matter.
The votey panel continues the joke with the doctor saying, "So... if I may quote the Raven..." -- referencing another famous Poe work, "The Raven," whose iconic refrain is "Nevermore." The implication is that the doctor is about to tell the wife her husband will "nevermore" be alive, delivering the worst possible news through the most literary means possible. The comic satirizes the idea that a liberal arts education is universally applicable by showing a scenario where literary knowledge is spectacularly inappropriate.