What is Irony?

Irony A surprise! It is the difference between what we expect to happen, and what actually does happen. It is often used to add suspense and interest. It is also used to keep the reader thinking about the moral of the story.

3 Types of Irony 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. Examples: o 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. o Mother: “I see you ironed your shirt.” Boy: “But I just dug it out of the bottom of the hamper.”

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: o The teacher’s daughter is a high school drop out. o The mayor’s wife gets caught stealing. o The chef won’t eat his/her own cooking. o The barber always needs a hair cut himself. o If you have a phobia of long words, you must tell people that you are Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobic. o A rat infestation at the Department of Sanitation o A person Tweets about how Twitter is a waste of time and energy. o You comment on the beautiful weather you’ve been having just five minutes before a tornado rips through your house.

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: o Romeo believes that Juliet is dead, but the audience knows that she has only been given a potion to sleep. o 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.

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.

Life’s True Ironies 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.

Life’s True Ironies Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's 2005 state of the nation address, in which he promised to remedy his country's chronic electricity shortages, was blacked out by a power failure. A 17-year-old Amish boy was electrocuted by a downed power line that became tangled in the wheels of his horse-drawn buggy. The "Marlboro Man" died of lung cancer. A 2001 Father's Day tribute on ESPN featured "How Sweet It Is (to be Loved by You)," sung by Marvin Gaye, who was shot and killed by his father in Entries for the Florida Press Club's 2005 Excellence in Journalism Award for hurricane coverage were lost in Hurricane Katrina.

Ironic endings - Read each of the story summaries below and then brainstorm what an ironic ending to the story would be. 1.The captain of the football team and the captain of the cheerleading squad have been dating since middle school, and are among the most popular students at their high school. It is now their senior year and everyone assumes that they will be named king and queen of the homecoming dance. What happens at the homecoming dance? 2.There is a thief at school! Someone has been breaking into student lockers and stealing cell phones, laptops, and other electronics. The school’s principal has made many announcements that students should be responsible with their belongings, as well as brought in several suspected student troublemakers for questioning. But weeks go by before the thief is caught. When the thief is caught, who is it?