Informant:

This joke was provided by Monique Warren, 20.  She considers herself “black” and is a student at the University of Southern California, studying Environmental Engineering.  Monique learned this joke from one of her roommates.  I collected it from her during a conversation in my apartment, but she most recently shared this joke at dinner with several friends from an engineering class.

Text:

Three guys end up stranded on an island, and they, like, get captured by, like cannibals.  And the cannibals are like, “We are going to skin you alive, and then we’re gonna use your skin for a canoe, and then we’re gonna eat you.”  I don’t know, I guess they were gonna make a stew or something.  And then they’re like, “But, we’ll give each of you one wish.”  So the first guy goes and wishes for a knife so he can kill himself and get it over faster.  The second guy’s like, “cool.  That seems like a good idea,” so he does the same thing.  Then they get to the third guy, and he’s like, “I want a fork.”  So they give him the fork and he starts stabbing himself all over the place [reenacts stabbing], and no one really gets what he’s doing until he shouts out, “Screw your canoe!”

Analysis:

This joke follows the rule of threes, with the first two victims following the same pattern and the third providing the punch-line.  Monique thinks the joke is funny because, as opposed to the first two, the third guy is so intent on ruining the cannibals’ plans that he behaves irrationally.  Interestingly, the climax of this joke comes in the form of punishing the cannibals. Cannibalism is very taboo, so it is not surprising that cannibals would become the butt of a joke, outsmarted and in a way defeated by a non-cannibal.