Too much bed rest
The first essay bears the name On Idleness and through it, the narrator confesses that he is an idle person. For him, happiness is equal with idleness and he always looks for occasions to be idle. Ironically, when the opportunity arises for him to be idle, he feels bored and unhappy to the point where he goes and looks for something to do. This happened when, while he was sick, he was advice to rest for a month. While in the beginning the narrator hoped that it will be a happy month, those days spent without doing nothing changed into something tortures and unbearable.
The joy of being missed
In the third essay, the narrator speaks about the emotions he experiences when he feel blue. He admits that during those times, when everything seems pointless and every person makes him angry, he finds happiness in thinking about sad events and gives as an example the scenario of his own death. In an ironical way, he finds happiness in those sad times by thinking about things that are tragic and painful, instead of thinking about joyful and positive things.
A house and a cow
In his essay about the desire every man has to have a comfortable life, the narrator gives as an example to support his idea that in order to achieve something, then that man must always think about getting the double amount of what he wants in reality, the writer Jean Jacques Rousseau. He is presented as an ironic example, because he desired to live a quiet life, away from the big cities, with a lovely woman by his side and a cow. Because he only wished for simple things, he never got the chance of having the thing he wished. If he had wished instead for an angle and a castle then, in the narrator’s opinion, he would have ended with a small house and a pleasant woman.
Idle overachiever
From the beginning, the narrator characterizes himself as being an idler who want nothing else to do than just to stay all day without doing anything. Ironically, when he speaks about the desire every person has to succeed in life, he urges his reader to not be content with the little they have and instead to always dream about great things.
Moody umbrella
The narrator describes his umbrella as being a moody character who always does the complete opposite of what it was supposed to do. The ironical description presents an umbrella that shuts itself when it rains and then opens itself when the sky is clear and blue, much to its master’s frustration.
