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the importance of Chaplin and his art 5
'making people laugh.' All I have ever done is to keep my eyes open and my brain alert for any facts or incidents that I could use in my business. I have studied human nature, because without a knowledge of it I could not do my work." — s
Elsewhere Chaplin said: "I have aimed in all my comedies at satirizing the human race. . . . The human race I prefer to think of as an underworld of the gods. When the gods go slumming they visit the earth. You see, my respect for the human race is not one hundred per cent."
His own physical stature made it natural for him to personify the little fellow, maladjusted to his environment and kicked about by life. If he had been three inches taller, Chaplin himself has remarked, it would have been impossible for him to portray this part. He arouses our sympathy as well as our laughter, as he portrays this tragi-comic figure of the tramp-underdog, harassed by poverty, the law, and his own handicaps — in Chaplin's own words again, "forever seeking romance, but his feet won't let him." Sometimes this character wins a temporary victory as David did over Goliath, by sheer wit and agility, both sharpened on the whetstone of life. Usually, however, he loses, yet with a shrug he ends up — a solitary figure — wandering hopefully up the eternal road to further adventure.
People pity and love this gallant figure who smiles through hardships, who desperately maintains his dignity and self-respect under the most trying circumstances. "I began to look upon humor," said Chaplin, "as a kind of gentle and benevolent custodian of the mind which prevents one from being overwhelmed by the apparent seriousness of life. It finds compensation in misfortune." A philosophy, teaching the sweetness of adversity, runs through all the amusing but penetrating studies of life Chaplin has given us.