Wayside School is Falling Down

Wayside School Is Falling Down demonstrates the absurdities of life at every turn, capitalizing upon whimsical wordplay and a cascading comedy of errors to lampoon the most nonsensical moments of school-age children and their antics. The very fabric of society at Wayside is immediately established as absurd, for the characters constantly contradict themselves, making ridiculous demands, and demonstrate illogical thinking. They also find themselves caught up in impossible predicaments, even their names are designed to reflect the unpredictability of the overall environment. Sachar uses this abundance of absurdity to maintain a humorous tone, and with the characters’ cheerful acceptance of bizarre situations, the author suggests that even in real life, absurdity is meant to be embraced rather than avoided.

The stories’ humorous tone is further emphasized when the students and the adults alike react with equanimity to inherently ridiculous character names. They see nothing out of the ordinary in such descriptive names as Bebe and Ray Gunn, Miss Mush, and Mr. Kidswatter, and the very fact that the underlying meaning of these names goes unaddressed adds to the sense that such absurdity is commonplace and therefore unremarkable. In the same vein, Sachar creates scenes that upend conventional expectations, and a prime example occurs when