What is Irony?
Irony AA Surprise! IIt is the difference between what we expect to happen, and what actually does happen. IIt is often used to add suspense and interest. IIt is also used to keep the reader thinking about the moral of the story.
The Big Picture Irony Verbal Irony Situational Irony Dramatic Irony
Three types of Irony Verbal Irony Situational Irony Dramatic Irony
Verbal Irony The simplest kind of irony. You use it everyday when you say one thing and really mean another. It is often similar to a sarcastic response. Example: When you appear to be sick and someone asks you if you’re okay. You say “Of course!” But in the meantime you are vomiting and fainting.
Verbal irony Mother: “I see you ironed your shirt.” Boy: “But I just dug it out of the bottom of the hamper.”
“The Tell-Tale Heart” – Verbal Irony "I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him."
Situational Irony The outcome of a situation is inconsistent with what we would expect would logically or normally occur; when a situation turns out to be the opposite of what we thought it would be. Examples: The teacher’s daughter is a high school drop out. The mayor’s wife gets caught stealing. The chef won’t eat his/her own cooking. The barber always needs a hair cut himself.
Situational Irony If you have a phobia of long words, you must tell people that you are Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobic. A rat infestation at the Department of Sanitation A person Tweets about how Twitter is a waste of time and energy. You comment on the beautiful weather you’ve been having just five minutes before a tornado rips through your house.
“The Tell-Tale Heart” – Situational Irony "His room was a black as pitch with thick darkness (for the shutters were close fastened through fear of robbers), and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it steadily, steadily.“ The only robber near the old man’s house is the caregiver!
Dramatic Irony Occurs when the audience knows something that the characters in the story, on the screen, or on the stage do not know. It’s like the audience is more aware of what’s going on than the people in the production. This is used to engage the audience and keep them actively involved in the storyline. Example: Romeo believes that Juliet is dead, but the audience knows that she has only been given a potion to sleep.
Dramatic Irony continued… In all of the Friday the 13 th movies, we know Jason is in the woods. The characters do not. When they go out into the woods we are afraid for them because we know that they are in danger. We scream for them to run, we get excited when they fall, we cringe when we know that Jason is right behind the tree.
“The Tell-Tale Heart” – Dramatic Irony We know that the narrator is mad despite his insistence that he is not. We know the old man is buried under the floorboards as the police search the house.
Review Irony is a kind of a surprise. It is the difference between what is expected to happen, and what actually does happen. Irony is like a glitch, a twist, or a last minute switch in the game. It is an interruption of events that cause an unexpected outcome. There are three types of irony: Verbal Situational Dramatic
Life’s True Ironies: The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later they were both eaten by a killer whale. A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her repeatedly with an axe, leaving her mentally retarded. In 1992, Frank Perkins of Los Angeles made an attempt on the world flagpole- sitting record. Suffering from the flu, he came down eight hours short of the 400- day record, to find that his sponsor had gone bankrupt, his girlfriend had left him and his phone and electricity had been cut off. A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current, she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Till that moment he had been happily listening to his Walkman. Two animal rights activists were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death. Iraqi terrorist Khay Rahnajet didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.
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