In the reading “Love is a Fallacy”, Max Shulman writes about a character named Max who attempts to have a relationship with a girl by trading his roommate a racoon coat for the girl in exchange. Max Shulman’s piece is neither anti-women nor anti- men and is, therefore, meant to be irony. This piece is rather ironic because of fallacies appear throughout the piece, the main character Max has fallacies in his thinking, and the character Polly speaks of the fallacies in Max’s reasoning.
Out of all the characters, there are only three characters, these three have at least one fallacy in their reasoning. The piece is mostly ironic because there are fallacies found throughout the work. It is not that difficult to see a fallacy. For example, Petey wanted a racoon coat because he said it was a popular thing to do. Petey had a fallacy called appealing to popularity or bandwagon. Not only is Petey having fallacies, Max is also. It is ironic that the individual teaching fallacies is creating fallacies himself and not entirely knowing that.
There are also other ironies that could be found throughout the piece. For example, Max was trying to change Polly into something she was not, he was trying to make her more intelligent than she actually is. It is ironic because she was able to use her knowledge against Max in the end of the piece. It is not really predictable that Polly would use the knowledge she learned against Max. The piece is neither anti- women or anti-women and mainly uses irony to teach the readers about fallacies. These fallacies stand out well in the presence of irony that may entertain the reader.
Reading a short story that contains information about fallacies is a much more interactive way of learning fallacies than learning fallacies from plain text that only provides definitions. Although Max appears to be teaching Polly about fallacies, Max has fallacies in his thinking. He says Petey is “dumb as an ox”, which is the fallacy of name calling. Max is a student in law school and has observed how successful lawyers are married to beautiful women and he believes Polly fits in that category of beautiful women.
Max is appealing to popularity, mostly the popularity of successful lawyers. Max wants to guide her to intelligence. Guiding her to intelligence seems to be a fallacy called wishful thinking because it is not very likely that one person can make an individual more intelligent. Max again used the fallacy of name calling when he called Polly a beautiful dumb girl. This fallacy discredits any intelligence of Polly. The lack of intelligence changes are perspective of Polly by including her in the category of people who cannot think logically along with Petey.
This characteristic of unintelligence we see aids in the how unexpected it was that Polly had used the knowledge against Max. Max has a fallacy called “false analogy” when he uses a weak analogy to support his reasoning that he is able to guide Polly to intelligence when he says it is “easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smarter than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful”. The analogy is weak. The significant part that expresses the most irony is the end of the piece where Polly shows how much she learned about fallacies and expresses how Max’s reasonings are indeed fallacies.
First, Max says he and Polly are well matched after spending five evenings. Polly says that the statement Max made was a hasty generalization. It is a hasty generalization because Max is clearly jumping to conclusions when it was only five dates. Another example is when Polly expresses that Max had the fallacy “Hypothesis Contrary to fact”. Later, Max gets frustrated that Polly has been using his knowledge of fallacies against him and also gets furiated about how Polly is going steady with Petey. There Max also had an attack on Petey by calling him a list, a cheat, and a rat.
As a result, Polly expressed that Max had a fallacy called “Poisoning the Well”. The biggest part that was the most ironic is at the ending when Max asked for a logical reason on why Holly wanted to go steady with Petey Bellows because she stated it was because of the racoon coat Petey had. Holly had the bandwagon fallacy because she appealed to the popularity of the racoon coat like how Petey appealed to its popularity. Max did not realize he had fallacies. It is either he did not know he had fallacies or he was hypocritical and did not know that Polly would recognize the fallacies.
It is ironic that Max was being hypocritical when he had fallacies himself. This irony is most likely helpful to the reader because it could remind the reader that fallacies may be around in our experiences even though we may not notice them. In the end of the story, the irony is on Polly when she decides to be with Petey because he has a racoon coat. Just like Petey, Polly was appealing to popularity. In “Love is a Fallacy”, Shulman writes about Max who wants a relationship with a girl by trading his roommate a racoon coat for the girl in exchange.
Max Shulman’s piece is neither anti-women nor anti-men and is, therefore, meant to be irony. This piece is rather ironic because of fallacies appear throughout the piece, the main character Max has fallacies in his thinking, and the character Polly speaks of the fallacies in Max’s reasoning. Out of all the characters, there are only three characters, these three have at least one fallacy in their reasoning. Irony is throughout the piece and is used to have interactive way for readers to learn about fallacies.