Sad!!

The short story Once Upon a Time presents an irony that was just very sad. Throughout the story, the parents are afraid of their house being broken into. They make all this security systems and then even put an eccentric bobwire fence that make it impossibe to climb over or get through. If anyone attempted to get through it, they would pretty much die. And this is what happened to the son the couple dearly loved. He was innocently playing a game with himself in which he tried to get through the fence but killed himself. So the security that they put up to protect themselves is what ended up killing their son. Complete irony!! This irony is also what helps contribute to the theme of the novel. I believe the theme of this novel to be that what we do to try to protect ourselves can actually come back to hurt us if we take that protection to the extreme. This theme is irony in itself, so having the situational irony in the story only adds to the effects of the the theme.

Shouldn't be talking

In the short story Everyday Use, the reader uses irony concerning Dee. At the end of the story, Dee addresses how her family, which includes her mother and sister, don't understand their own heritage. However, this is ironic because throughout the story, it is apparent that Dee does not understand her own heritage and even appears to be running away from it by marrying a man of a different culture and even changing her name completely to that of the different culure. She is the one who doesn't understand her own culture. But how does this contribute to the meaning of the text? Well, the title of the story is Everyday Use, and this relates to how the things that Dee wants to take from her mother's house to keep for herself and use as decoration are actually items that are used daily. So taking these items, especially the quilt, kind of relates how she is the one ignorant of her culture. So the use of irony and how it contributes to the text are successful ways of showing her arrogant and ignorant character.

Crazy twist!

In the poem "Edward", the pattern of the poem is one tool that helps me identify the irony of the poem. So firstly, I will describe the pattern. Each staza is broken up into Edward saying something to his mom, his mom replying, then the next staza is introduced. We know who is talking because the two call each other by name when talking to one another. However, here is where we understand the irony of the poem party through the pattern. Whenever Edward says "Mother, Mother", that is the only way her refers to her. He never calls her dear or any other word that shows much affection. However, when he confesses that he killed his father, he refers to his father as "my father dear." This represents how he still had affection for his father when he killed him meaning he did not do it out of anger or hatred of his father because he had affection for him. Then the last line of the poem is what solidifies this statement and expands on it further by Edward saying, "Such counsels you gave to me, O." In this line, Edward is saying that his mother was the one who told him to go kill his father. This is where the irony plays in because the mom is never really seen as being the bad person of the poem until this final line.

Unexpected Irony

In the poem "My mistress' eyes", the poem is full of irony throughout the poem, and the big "bang!" part of the irony really comes out at the end. Usually when men describe the woman they love, they use hyperboles and go on to say very cheesy things. They may compare the girl to something that is far more amazing and beautiful than the girl, but they make the comparison anyway and "lie" about it. However, the speaker in this poem does quite the opposite. Instead, he goes on to describe how many other things in the world are much more beautiful than her. This is ironic becuase men usually don't say things like this to girls, the reader expects him to say nice things like how her eyes are like the sun. But throughout the poem he goes on to make these "negative" comparisons. However, the big irony comes to play at the end of the poem. He goes on to say how he loves her and she is as beautiful as all the other girls who are lied to (or exaggerated to). The reader would expect the speaker to not love this woman and probably even think she was ugly in the narrator's eyes. But instead, she is supposedly beautiful and throughout the whole poem, he was just mocking those who do exaggerate to their women.