Transcript Elements of Literature: Character

Irony and Ambiguity
Feature Menu
Surprises and Uncertainties
What Is Irony?
Verbal Irony
Situational Irony
Dramatic Irony
Review
What Is Ambiguity?
Practice
Surprises and Uncertainties
Writers use irony and ambiguity to create trueto-life stories. Irony and ambiguity help writers
convey
• the way real life surprises us,
whether to our delight or to our
disappointment
• our lack of knowledge about the
future and whether it will fulfill our
expectations
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What Is Irony?
Irony is the contrast between expectation and
reality. Three kinds of irony are
• verbal irony
• situational irony
• dramatic irony
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Verbal Irony
In verbal irony, a speaker says one thing but
means the opposite. Verbal irony
• is the simplest kind of irony
• can become sarcasm if taken to a harsh
extreme
Verbal Irony
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice begins with an
excellent example of verbal irony.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single
man in possession of a good fortune must be in want
of a wife.
How might this opening sentence be an example
of verbal irony?
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Situational Irony
In situational irony, what actually happens is the
opposite of what is expected or appropriate.
Situational irony
• is often humorous
• may mock human plans and intentions, which
in real life often come to little
Situational Irony
Read this sentence from Hanson W. Baldwin’s
R.M.S. Titanic.
. . . she was fresh from Harland and
Wolff’s Belfast yards, strong in the
strength of her forty-six thousand tons
of steel, bent, hammered, shaped, and
riveted through the three years of her
slow birth.
Explain the situational irony in this ship sinking on
its first voyage.
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Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony occurs when the reader or the
audience knows something important that the
character does not know. Dramatic irony
• adds greatly to the tension in stories, plays,
and movies
• heightens the sense of humor in comedies and
deepens the sense of dread in tragedies
Dramatic Irony
In this passage from Stephen Vincent Benét’s “By the
Water of Babylon,” the narrator describes the vision he
has while exploring the ruins of New York City.
What do readers know that the narrator does not?
When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not
know. It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that
poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the
Destruction. They ran about like ants in the streets of their
city—poor gods, poor gods! Then the towers began to fall. A
few escaped—yes, a few. The legends tell it. . . . I saw it
happen, I saw the last of them die. It was darkness over the
broken city and I wept.
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Review
Quick Check
After tripping over his own
feet, the teen exclaims, “That
was graceful!”
The movie audience knows
that a hostile alien is just past
the door. “Don’t go in there!”
one viewer yells at the screen.
The guest opens his mouth
to compliment the chef, but
before he can speak, he burps
long and loudly.
Identify each
item as one of
the following:
• verbal irony
• situational
irony
• dramatic irony
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What Is Ambiguity?
Ambiguity is the element of uncertainty in a text,
in which something can be interpreted in a number
of different ways. Ambiguity
• adds complexity to a work
• invites readers to propose a
variety of interpretations of
a work
• is found in subtle language
and fine distinctions in a
work
What Is Ambiguity?
A work’s theme or mood may be ambiguous.
• If a complex work has more than one theme,
the work’s meaning will be ambiguous and
multilayered.
• A complex work may shift in tone from
humorous to serious or from joyful to tragic.
What Is Ambiguity?
When a work ends in ambiguity, readers must
think about what the ending means. Read the last
lines from R.M.S. Titanic. How do you interpret the
final four words?
“The night was clear,” reported Lord Mersey, “and the sea
was smooth. When she first saw the rockets, the Californian
could have pushed through the ice to the open water without
any serious risk and so have come to the assistance of the
Titanic. Had she done so she might have saved many if not
all of the lives that were lost.
“She made no attempt.”
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Practice
Invent an example of each kind of irony.
Describe each example in a paragraph. Record
your examples in a similar chart.
Verbal
irony
Say one thing but mean the
opposite
Example:
Situational
irony
What happens is the
Example:
opposite of what is expected
Dramatic
irony
We know something a
character does not know
Example:
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The End