【6.2】
Types of Irony
One of the most human traits is the capacity to have two or more attitudes toward
something. You might love someone but on occasion express your affection by insults
rather than praise. A large number of contemporary greeting cards feature witty insults,
because many people cannot stand the sentimentality of “straight” cards, preferring to
send the insulting card in the expectation that the recipient will be amused and will
recognize the sender’s genuine fondness. Expressions in which one attitude is
conveyed by its opposite are ironic. Irony is a mode of ambiguous or indirect
expression; it is natural to human beings who are aware of the possibilities and
complexities in life. The major types of irony are verbal, situational, and dramatic.
Verbal Irony
Verbal irony is a statement in which one thing is said and another is meant. For
example, one of the American astronauts was asked how he would feel if all his
reentry safety equipment failed as he was coming back to earth. He answered, “A
thing like that could ruin your whole day.” His words would have been appropriate for
day-to-day minor mishaps, but since failed safety equipment would cause his death,
his answer was ironic. This form of verbal irony is understatement. By contrast,
overstatement or hyperbole is exaggeration for effect, as in “I’ll love you till the
oceans go dry.” Often verbal irony is ambiguous, having double meaning or
double-entendre. For example, at the end of Collier’s The Chaser (cf.p.176), the old
man responds to Austen’s “goodbye” with the French farewell salutation “Au revoir”.
This phrase, meaning “until I see you again”, is not especially unusual, and on the
surface it seems fairly innocent, but the context makes clear that the old man’s final
words are a dire prediction that Austen will return one day for the untraceable poison.
In other words, the old man’s statement has two meanings, one innocent and the other
sinister. Ambiguity of course may be used in relation to any topic. Quite often
double-entendre is used in statements about sexuality and love, usually for the
amusement of listeners and readers.
Situational Irony
The term situational irony, or irony of situation, refers to conditions that are measured
against forces that transcend and overpower human capacities. These forces may be
psychological, social, political, or environmental. For example, Collier’s story, The
Chaser is based on the irony of situation in which an unrealistic desire for romantic
possession leads people inevitably toward destructiveness rather than everlasting love.
Such kind of situational irony connected with a pessimistic or fatalistic view of life is
sometimes also called irony of fate or cosmic irony.
Situational irony could of course work in a more optimistic context. For example,
an average, or even blockheaded person could go through a set of difficult
circumstances and be on the verge of losing everything in life, but, through someone’s
perversity or through luck, might emerge successfully, as does Scoresby in Samuel
Clemens’s story Luck (cf. P. 180). Such a situation could reflect an author’s
conception of a benevolent universe, or, as in the case of Scoresby, a more arbitrarily
comic one.
Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is a special kind of situational irony; it applies when a character
perceives a situation in a limited way while the audience, including other characters,
may see it in greater perspective. The character therefore is able to understand things
in only one way while the larger audience can perceive two. The character Austen in
The Chaser is locked into such irony; he believes that the only poison he will ever
need is the one that will win him love, while the old man and the readers know that he
will one day return for the poison. The classic example of dramatic irony is found in
the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. All his life Oedipus has been entrapped by fate,
which he can never escape. As the play draws to its climax and Oedipus believes that
he is about to discover the murderer of his father, the audience knows that he is
drawing closer to the point of his own self-destruction: as he condemns the murderer,
he is also condemning himself.
As critic Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg note in their study of narrative
literature, The Nature of Narrative (1966), there are “in any example of narrative
art…broadly speaking, three points of view---those of the characters, the narrator, and
the audience.” When any of the three “perceives more---or less---than another, irony
must be either actually or potentially present.” In any work of fiction, it is crucially
important that we are able to determine if and how that potential has been explored; to
overlook or misinterpret the presence of irony can only lead to a misinterpretation of
the author’s attitudes and tone and the way he would have us approach and understand
the work.