Tuesday, December 15th, 2015
The Effects of Irony Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” includes several examples of each type of irony: dramatic, verbal, situational, and cosmic irony. Each type of irony serves a unique purpose to the context of the story. The four irony’s adds an effective on the narrative of the story as a whole because (THESIS) Dramatic Irony is when the audience knows something that the other characters don’t. The grandmother believes that she is a proper, etiquette, and respectful Southern lady. Although, as the readers continue to read the story, they learn more and more about her: that she is not actually the type of woman that she thinks she is. For instance, she wears “a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress white dot in the print” (2). The description of her outfit demonstrates that she the way she dresses depicts who she thinks she is: a proper lady. Although, as the story progresses, we learn that. This demonstrates that she is actually a quite deceitful woman who embellishes stories and tells falsehoods to get what she wants. Verbal irony, in this case an understatement, is when you understate something in order to make a point. At the beginning of the story, the grandmother says that she would rather go to Tennessee than to Florida; so she makes sure to remind her family that “An enraged killer, The Misfit,” was preying upon people in Florida. Although, later in the story she is begging for her life, telling “The Misfit” that he seems like a good man, and one that was brought up with good intentions. Situational irony is when the expected outcome does not happen or an irony of events where the outcome can be serious or humorous. Cosmic irony is an event that happens that when you look back, you believe it was destiny to happen.