Rose and a Cask
An Exploration of the Use of Irony in Literature?A young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout? (Swift). Jonathan Swift?s essay, A Modest Proposal is a terrific example of the use of irony and satire to push an issue further by using irony than it can be when looked at from a more serious point of view. In A Modest Proposal he proposes to pay beggar mothers for their children when the children are a year old in order to provide food for the growing population and in order to control this rampant plague of population growth. Many authors have been using irony as a staple in their writing simply because irony is a more effective tool than seriousness. The tension between appearance and reality, between expectation and outcome; this is the heart of the ironic paper. Irony is divided into three branches, each defining a different element. Dramatic, situational and verbal ironies are each used to define distinct situations. Irony can add entertainment, humor and drama to a story that would otherwise be bland. Irony can
change the attitude of a story entirely and can often highlight an idea more dramatically than serious literature can. No? Then I must positively leave you. ? It is ironic that it is not the news of her husband?s death, but his survival that actually kills her. Its use in literature is often poignant in making the reader think about an issue that otherwise would be passed over and ignored. Perhaps most gruesome of all, in William Faulkner?s A Rose for Emily, the narrator says that ?Now and the we would see her in one of the downstairs windows ? she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house?. ? Irony adds entertainment to a story. ? We have by this time guessed that she has her lover?s corpse locked in a room on the top floor, but the narrator and other characters do not. Fortunato screams ?FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR,? at the horror of being buried alive. It brings humor, drama and suspense to a story and usually succeeds in surprising people as well. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a strand of iron-gray hair (Faulkner). This is ironic to the story in retrospect because Mrs. For the love of God,? revealing his motive for murder as a religious crusade against the Masonic Brotherhood.
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