irony


 * Irony** - the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weeke nd.

//**Dramatic irony** occurs when the audience knows// //more than one or several of the characters in the story, a condition which pushes audience attention into the future because it creates anticipation about what is going to happen when the truth comes out.//

Oedipus: When he grew up, Oedipus heard a prophecy that he would kill his father and sleep with his mother, so he headed away from Corinth to avoid this fate. Passing a rude man whom he didn't know (but who was in reality his birth father Laius) on the road, Oedipus killed the stranger and then proceeded to Thebes, where he married the recently widowed Jocasta. So it's ironic when Oedipus is searching for the killer of Laius. As the clues to the mystery unfold all around him, I find myself thinking, "Oedipus, are you blind?"

"In //[|There's Something About Mary]// (1998), [when] Ted thinks he's been arrested for picking up a hitchhiker while the audience knows he's being questioned by police about a murder, otherwise innocuous lines he delivers, such as 'I've done it several times before' and 'It's no big deal,' generate laughter." (Paul Gulino, //Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach//. Continuum, 2004)

Another example is [|Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic,"]

An old man turned ninety-eight He won the lottery and died the next day It's a black fly in your Chardonnay It's a death row pardon two minutes too late And isn't it ironic...dontcha think

It's like rain on your wedding day It's a free ride when you've already paid It's the good advice that you just didn't take Who would've thought...it figures

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye He waited his whole damn life to take that flight And as the plane crashed down he thought "Well isn't this nice..." And isn't it ironic...dontcha think

It's like rain on your wedding day It's a free ride when you've already paid It's the good advice that you just didn't take Who would've thought...it figures

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you When you think everything's okay and everything's going right And life has a funny way of helping you out when You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up In your face

A traffic jam when you're already late A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife It's meeting the man of my dreams And then meeting his beautiful wife And isn't it ironic...dontcha think A little too ironic...and yeah I really do think...

It's like rain on your wedding day It's a free ride when you've already paid It's the good advice that you just didn't take Who would've thought...it figures

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out Helping you out


 * Ironically, this song has no examples of irony. Below are some of the lyrics altered by college students to make it actually ironic.**

An old man turned ninety-eight. He won the lottery and died the next day... of chronic emphysema from inhalation of the latex particles scratched off decades' worth of lottery tickets.

A black fly in your Chardonnay... poured to celebrate the successful fumigation of your recently purchased vineyard in southern France.

A death row pardon two minutes too late... because the governor was too busy watching Dead Man Walking to grant clemency any earlier.

Rain on your wedding day... to Ra, the Egyptian sun-god.

A free ride when you've already paid... all of your money to the good-natured cab driver when you mistook him for a mugger.

The good advice that you just didn't take... after reading Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking and resolving that the key to success is making your own decisions.

Mr. Play-it-Safe was afraid to fly. He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye. He waited his whole damn life to take that flight. And as the plane crashed down, he thought, Well isn't this nice... now I'll never make it to the National Association of Aviophobics conference in Reno, NV.

A traffic jam when you're already late... to receive an award from the Municipal Planning Board for reducing the city's automobile congestion 80 percent.

A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break... at the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco corporate offices in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Meeting the man of my dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife... who happens to be the psychiatrist I recently hired in hopes of improving my luck with the opposite sex.

- [|Yahoo Answers]

more on this

[|verbal irony] is a figure of speech in which what is said is the opposite of what is meant. Closely related to sarcasm, understatement, and overstatement. Irony can appear in other forms.

It can be circumstantial or accidental. For example: * An ambulance driver rushes to the scene of an accident, only to run the victim over, because the victim crawled into the middle of the street in the darkness of night. This is an example of irony since, in this circumstance, the ambulance driver was (accidentally) duplicitous - while he stated one intention, his actions (accidentally) conveyed the complete opposite outcome.

Irony can be situational. For example: * In an effort to restrict viewership of a morally offensive movie, the city council bans exhibition of the movie in theatres. By banning the movie, the city council creates such a heightened awareness of the movie, that more people download and view pirated copies of the movie over the internet - specifically because it was banned - than would have viewed it in the theatres to begin with. This example is ironic, because the city council achieved the exact opposite effect of what it expressly set out to accomplish.

Irony can be fateful. For example: * In 1912 the Titanic was touted as "100% unsinkable", and yet the ship sank on its maiden voyage. In this example, the stated intent and the result were diametrically opposed. Similarly, in another example: * In 1981, while standing next to his car, President Ronald Regan was hit in the chest by a bullet fired by John Hinkley Jr. In fact, Hinkley's bullet completely missed President Reagan, but then ricocheted off the car's bulletproof window, and struck President Reagan in the chest.

[|WikiAnswers - What are some examples of irony]