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IRONY and PARADOX

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Title: IRONY and PARADOX


1
IRONY and PARADOX
  • by Don L. F. Nilsen and
  • Alleen Pace Nilsen

2
Roadside Ironies
3
Irony A Definition
  • The word IRONY comes from the Greek eiron meaning
    dissembler in speech.
  • In modern English, the term usually refers to
    speech incidents in which the intended meaning of
    the words is contrary to their literal
    interpretation.

4
HISTORICALLY, IRONY IN LITERATURE developed
during the Age of the Enlightenmentthe time of
Voltaire, Hume, Pope, Dryden, Swift, Addison,
Steele, and Diderot however it has a long
history as in these examples.
  • In Chaucers 14th-century Canterbury Tales, an
    unhappily married merchant grandly praises
    marriage.
  • In Shakespeares Julius Caesar, Marc Antonys
    extravagant praise of Caesar is ironic.
  • Jonathan Swifts 18th-century Modest Proposal
    putting forward the idea that the English should
    start eating Irish babies was ironic.
  • A related irony is that some of Swifts opponents
    read his ironic proposal as legitimate and
    therefore attempted to have Swift declared insane.

5
  • There is double irony in O. Henrys 1906 story
    The Gift of the Magi in which a husband sells
    his watch to buy gold combs for his wifes hair
    while she sells her hair to buy a gold chain for
    his watch.
  • This is similar to the joke about the two
    friends, one a Catholic and one a Protestant, who
    try to convert each other. They presented such
    convincing arguments that the Protestant became a
    Catholic and the Catholic became a Protestant.
  • In the 1980s, Art Buchwald observed about Gary
    Trudeau that as with all successful
    anti-Establishment figures, Mr. Trudeau will
    soon be an honored member of the Establishment.

6
DRAMATIC IRONY IN LITERATURE occurs when the
audience, or one of the characters, knows
something that the other characters do not.
  • Jerzy Kosinskis novel and the movie Being There
    is the story of a mentally disabled gardener
    named Chauncey Gardner. Because of unusual
    circumstances, Chauncey is mistaken for a sage
    and a great visionary. As he makes ordinary
    comments appropriate to a gardener, his listeners
    supply grandiose metaphorical meanings.
  • In George Bernard Shaws play, Major Barbara, one
    of the tensest moments for the audience is when
    they learn that the shed, just entered by a
    character who casually lit a cigarette, is filled
    with high explosives.

7
Even young children have the skill to appreciate
dramatic irony
  • In Goldilocks and the Three Bears, kindergarten
    children are amused that while the bears are
    puzzled, they know what happened to Baby Bears
    porridge.
  • They also like the fun of seeing how the youngest
    goat, in the story of Three Billy Goats Gruff,
    sets out to fool the troll who lives under the
    bridge.
  • And in the modern picture book, Miss Nelson Is
    Missing by Harry Allard and James Marshall,
    children are amused that by looking carefully at
    the pictures, they knowwhile the students in the
    classroom do notthat the horrible, mean
    substitute teacher Miss Viola Swamp, is really
    their kind and loving Miss Nelson in disguise.

8
IRONY VS. SATIRE
  • Critic Northrop Frye makes a distinction between
    satire and irony. He says that satire is a
    criticism of society with a clear understanding
    in the authors mind of what society should be
    like, but is not.
  • The author of a satire hopes to persuade readers
    to work for the authors vision as does C.S.
    Lewis in his Screwtape Letters.
  • Those who create gallows humor and irony do not
    intend to point their readers in a particular
    direction, but instead to leave them in doubt.
  • As Frye says, Whenever a reader is not sure what
    the authors attitude is or what his own is
    supposed to be, we have irony with relatively
    little satire.

9
One Definition of Irony is That it Inspires the
Receiver of the Message to Ponder its Meaning
  • What does the message on this pickup mean?
  • Is the owner saying he chooses Arizona, NOT
    California?
  • Or is he saying that he chooses Not Arizona, but
    California?
  • Is this irony or just ambiguity?

10
Examples of Irony
11
Many modern critics make only a two-way
distinction between LINGUISTIC and. SITUATIONAL
humor.
  • Linguistic irony requires a sender and a
    receiver, while situational irony requires only
    an observer with a clever mind as when Lily
    Tomlin buys a waste basket.
  • The clerk puts it into a paper sack so she can
    take it home, and the first thing Tomlin does
    when she gets home is to put the paper sack into
    the waste basket.
  • Derek Evans and Dave Fulwilers Whos Nobody in
    America is filled with such ironic complaints as
    the one from James M. Gatwood of San Ramon,
    California. In seven visits to his dentist he
    spent 2,800 and the dentist still calls him
    Sidney. Gatwood asks in frustration, Who the
    hell is Sidney?

12
STABLE IRONY VS. OBSERVABLE IRONY
  • Literary critic Wayne Booth uses the term stable
    irony to refer to that which humans create to be
    heard or read and understood with some precision.
    He says that stable ironies allow readers
    glimpses into authors most private thoughts.
  • An example of Observable (or Situational) Irony
    is when a premature monsoon ruins an armys
    invasion plans or when lightning strikes just as
    a preacher raises his arms to make a dramatic
    point about God.
  • In such situations, all that is needed is an
    aware observer. Writers and dramatists often
    work such observable ironies into their plots.

13
Friends Of Irony
  • http//www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/1715592/Fr
    iendsofirony/

14
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15
More Examples of Irony
16
Paradox vs. Contradiction
  • Because paradoxes appear to be contradictions,
    they are ironic in that observers must view the
    paradox from two competing points of view. They
    seem contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd, but
    in some sense are true.
  • While highlighting breakdowns in our expectations
    of a logical universe, they are sources of both
    delight and consternation as the human mind works
    to figure out how people can in good faith talk
    about a large mouse running between the legs of
    a small elephant, or can make sense out of the
    Yiddish curse, He should drop dead, God forbid!

17
Paradoxes Are Sometimes the Result of Paradigm
Shifts in the History of Ideas
  • For example the most basic or earliest meaning of
    man may have been in contrast to animal, i.e.
    human cf. beast.
  • But then it took on a meaning man in contrast to
    woman, followed by the word acquiring such
    additional meanings as bravery and noble
    behavior.
  • It was in this sense that David Ben-Gurion in the
    1970s called Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir,
    The best man in government.
  • DO WE STILL HAVE CONFUSIONSAND SOMETIMES
    HUMORREVOLVING AROUND THE WORD MAN?

18
PARADOXES IN CHILDRENS LITERATURE
  • From Lemony Snicket
  • It doesnt take courage to kill someone It
    takes a severe lack of moral stamina.
  • Assumptions are dangerous things to makebombs,
    for instance, or strawberry shortcakeif you make
    even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in
    terrible trouble.
  • In The Miserable Mill, when a worker gets his leg
    mangled, his fellow workers give him a coupon for
    50 off at the Ahab Memorial Hospital in
    Paltryville.
  • From Lewis Carroll
  • Why, sometimes Ive believed as many as six
    impossible things before breakfast.
  • The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterdaybut
    never jam today.
  • Now here, you see, it takes all the running you
    can do, to keep in the same place. If you want
    to get somewhere else, you must run at least
    twice as fast as that.

19
Irony in Signs
20
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21
SOCRATIC IRONY
  • Socratic irony occurs when a person pretends to
    be ignorant and willing to learn from another,
    but then asks adroit questions that expose the
    weaknesses in the other persons argument.
  • The name comes from the Greek philosopher (c.
    470-399 B.C.) Socrates, who developed the
    Socratic method of teaching through asking
    questions designed to elicit answers from
    inside his students.
  • Along with Aristotle and Plato, he is given
    credit for laying the philosophical foundations
    of Western culture.

22
TRAGIC IRONY occurs in situations where there are
terrible consequences as in the Greek drama
Oedipus Rex, Shakespeares Hamlet and King Lear,
and maybe even Arthur Millers Death of a
Salesman.
  • So why in a class on humor, should we look at
    tragic irony?
  • One reason is that by recognizing tragic irony in
    literature, we will be better able to recognize
    it in real life and perhaps do something about
    it.
  • Also by looking at tragically ironic events, we
    can gain insights into the kind of dark humor
    that became fashionable in the latter half of the
    20th century.

23
Joseph Hellers Catch-22 as an example of Dark
Humor
  • The title of Hellers anti-war novel is so
    intriguing that it is now in dictionaries as the
    name for any tricky problem, especially one for
    which the only solution is denied by a
    circumstance inherent in the problem.
  • In the book, Yossarian would be excused from
    flying bombing missions if he were declared
    insane. However the fact that he is trying to
    get out of flying bombing missions proves his
    sanity. He therefore has to keep flying.
  • A second paradox is that the pilots can go home
    after flying a number of missions, but the number
    keeps getting larger.

24
A Winter Irony
25
Real-life Tragedies Growing Out of Paradoxical
Events
  • Is this last paradox similar to what some of
    todays soldiers feel about having their time
    extended in Iraq or Afghanistan?
  • In July of 2012, news stories revealed that,
    ironically, an average of one soldier per day was
    committing suicide while serving in an
    institution designed to prevent death.

26
Real-Life Catch-22s illustrate the kind of irony
illustrated by many urban legends and
contemporary novels, films, and plays
  • People who cant get a job until they have
    experience and who cant get experience until
    they have a job are in a Catch-22.
  • So are Authors who cant get their manuscripts
    published until they have an agent but cant get
    an agent until they have been published.
  • A newspaper story under the headline Texas in
    Catch-22 told about a Texas State law forbidding
    the execution of anyone insane. However, a
    prisoner on death row refused to take the
    medication that would keep him sane so the State
    was left in limbo.

27
Ironies in the Attempted Assassination of
President Ronald Reagan
  • On a smaller scale, it was ironic that when John
    Hinckley tried to assassinate President Reagan,
    his shots went awry, but one bounced back from
    the bullet-proof steel of the Presidents
    limousine and entered Reagans body. This means
    that in effect Reagan was shot by his own
    Presidential limousine, which was designed to
    protect him.
  • At the time of the shooting, Reagan was leaving
    the Washington Hilton Hotel, which local
    humorists now refer to as the Hinckley Hilton.
  • President Reagan gave his a stamp of approval
    to joking about the assassination attempt when he
    asked the doctors treating him if they were
    Republicans. That he could make a joke while
    on a stretcher being wheeled into emergency
    surgery, relieved tensions around the world.
    WHY? HOW?

28
IRONY AND PARADOX FOR FUN
  • ONLY IN AMERICA
  • do banks leave vault doors open and then chain
    the pens to the counters.
  • do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in
    the driveway and put our useless junk in the
    garage.
  • do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to
    the back of the store to get their prescriptions
    while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the
    front counter.

29
Explain the irony!
30
MORE SITUATIONAL IRONIES
  • DO YOU EVER WONDER...
  • WHY the time of day with the slowest traffic is
    called rush hour?
  • WHY they sterilize the needle for lethal
    injections?
  • WHY if flying is so safe, airports are called
    terminals?
  • WHY sheep dont shrink when it rains?

31
Ironic statements are sometimes used as
conversational lubricantsa kind of anticipatory
apology.
  • EXAMPLES
  • Not to change the subject, but . . .
  • Far be it from me to say, but . . .
  • I dont mean to impose my opinion, but . . .
  • Clearly . . . or It is well known that . . .
  • Do speakers realize they are starting out by
    saying just the opposite of what they intend?
  • Do you think the speakers appear humble or
    tricky?
  • How do these examples differ from the
    contradictory The King Is Dead! God Save the
    King!

32
IRONY FOR PERSUASIONThis turn on the phrase
Will Work for Food was used as an attention
getter in a serious article.
  • The author was protesting how in todays economy,
    companies are increasingly asking students to do
    work for free (sometimes paying tuition for the
    privilege) that before the downturn they would
    have been paid for.

33
More IRONY FOR FUN. Search Irony on the
Internet, to find photos of such real-life
ironies as
  • A rusted can of RUSTOLEUM paint.
  • A SAFE DRIVING school with a car crashed through
    the front window.
  • A WEIGHT WATCHERS office sharing a building with
    a BASKIN ROBBINS ice cream shop.
  • A sign in the midst of a traffic jam reading LANE
    CLOSED TO EASE CONGESTION.
  • A billboard from Pacific Bell reading PHONE OUT
    OF SERVICE? GIVE US A CALL.

34
ALANIS MORISSETTE Ironic Song with Lyrics
  • http//www.youtube.com/watch?vNm-1xvWibt0

35
Is this Visual Irony stand-up or sit-down
comedy?Actually, the nuns are sitting on stools
with interesting legs.
36
On Searching for Answers
  • Because it is so hard to give definitions and
    clear-cut answers to all the possible questions
    about paradox and irony, we will end with a few
    more paradoxical statements made by famous
    writers and thinkers.
  • When I grow up, I want to be a little boy. Joseph
    Heller
  • Nowadays people know the price of everything and
    the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde
  • There isnt any answer. There aint going to be
    any answer. There never has been an answer.
    Thats the answer. Gertrude Stein

37
In conclusion, Ironies are everywhere!
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