Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Irony

       Irony is the explanation of something or the expression of something using words that could somehow contradict each other, it could be sarcastic as well. Irony is always part of everyone's life without us noticing it. My whole life I've hated drawing, art, creative things in general; I always thought they were useless and a waste of my time. I would always tell my art teachers that drawing and art was not going to pay my bills. Now that I'm about to attend college I decided that I want to become a Fashion Designer, and to my surprise sketching plays a huge role in my career and even my college acceptance, since I have to make a portfolio full of neatly done high fashion sketches. Who would have thought that I was going to need drawing so badly in my life and that it will pay my bills.  Irony is also everywhere I look like in TV, educational books, ads, or the subway. An example of irony could also be the book "Animal Farm" by George Orwell. In this book the animals got tired of the abuse from humans and decided to get together and overthrow the humans. After they succeeded and got their freedom, they started acting like humans and created their own leaders, which would abuse the inferior animals. The irony of the book is that animals fought humans for their freedom and respect, however they end up doing the same to themselves.  Another example common in subways is that for years people have been riding the train, and before when people did not have as much freedom as now, man would always get up and give their seat for a woman, whether she was young or not. Now, that we are all fully free and liberated we have to stand, and watch man sit and not offer the seat whether we old, pregnant or  full of bags.

                     An example of irony in a poem is "Richard Cory" by Edwin Arlington Robinson, it describes how ironic a man's life is and people's desire to be him without knowing how miserable he was deep inside. Richard Cory was a man respected by his community, he was very educated and also spoke very well, he carried himself in a respectful way to other, and he was also very wealthy. He was also always dressed very nice, very clean and looked almost perfect. Whenever his neighbors would see him they would greet him with respect and want to be him, they wanted to look like him, dress like him and have what he had. "He was a gentleman from sole to crown". This line from the poem shows how he fulfilled everything a gentleman is to people's eyes. "In fine, we thought he was everything". The line above shows how everyone in his community thought he was perfect, and had everything they could ever want, they badly wanted to be like him and have his life. "Went home and put a bullet through his head". The line above was the last line of the poem, Richard Cory killed himself. The poem completely shocked me because by the way Richard Cory was described I thought he was immensely happy and would not want anything more in his life. However he obviously had his own issues maybe he was lonely or guilty for something and just decided to escape his sadness, loneliness, issues and took away his life. The irony of this poem is, everyone in the community envied Richard because he was rich, handsome, educated, well dressed; while everyone in the community was part of the hard working class, they barely ate meat and probably were far from well of as Richard. While everyone was wishing to have all the luxury this man had they had the most valuable thing, what this wealthy man was craving for; love, a family, happiness. Sometimes people need to understand that wealth is not going to bring happiness in life, sometimes the smallest things in life is what is going to make us happy.

                      The short story "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl, is another example of irony.  Mary Maloney was the wife of a detective, she always craved for his attention and wanted to make him happy. One  night she kept anxiously waiting for him, she always did; she loved him so much.That night he told her some shocking news, she ignored them and insisted on serving him supper, he kept saying no to her. At the end Mary grabbed a leg of lamb she was planning to cook for supper since her husband loved it, and threw to the back of his neck while he tried to leave for the night. He was dead, she had killed her husband with the leg of lamb. When she called the police and informed the "murder", she kept her attitude calm. She lied and said she had left to the grocery to get some vegetables to make with the lamb, and then she just fund her husband dead. The detectives that were in charge of the case didn't suspect she had done it, they were looking for the killer. They knew Patrick was killed with a blunt heavy weapon that hit his neck; they looked all over the house for the weapon. After a while Mary offered the detectives to have some of the lamb she was cooking, she claimed she couldn't eat it since after everything she had lost her appetite. After a while all the detectives were eating the lamb, how ironic they were eating their evidence. They were working so hard to find the murder weapon, and it was right in front of them; they were eating it.


                  The article "The House that Slaves Built", by Gardiner Harris, shows irony in history. 200 years ago black people weren't allowed in the White House, they were still slaves, and if they lived in the White House they were there as servants, now Barack Obama is the President of the United States and lives there with his family. This article shows two main ironies. First, slaves built this house, like the title says. They worked hard and built it all by themselves, there wasn't any white workers at the time doing that type of work. Instead of them being credited for the amazing work they did, they were looked down to and kept as slaves. The second irony is that these people that believed in having slaves fought so hard in keeping them away from either their dinner table, even the White House. For example, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wife Eleanor, was criticized many times for openly inviting blacks in her many social events at the White House. Certain people couldn't tolerate the thought of a black person being in the White House, and were upset that this was allowed. The irony of this is that after 200 years, now the person in power and control of the whole country and that lives in the White House is a black person, Barack Obama.


                After reading the article "Is it ironic that so many don't understand irony"?, I realized how many things we believe to be ironic aren't ironic. Just because something is out of place, and have some type of similarity and not be the same doesn't make an irony. This article talks about how the author has a co worker that is very educated graduated from college, and a freelance writer, and didn't know what irony is. The most ironic part about it is not just the fact that she's using irony in a wrong way; but that she is a writer and doesn't even know this. Irony is very common in the English language and a writer is expected to know what it means and even write about it. In the article several examples have been giving on statements whether they are ironic or not. For example someone posted "Is it ironic that I posted how boring and useless Facebook is on Facebook"? I found this myself extremely ironic however, 93% of writers found it not ironic. The reason why this statement is ironic is because, if Faceboook is so useless and boring; why are you being entertained by posting something on the website, and most of all getting people's attention.




The cartoon above is an example of irony. The dog is drinking from the toilet, which is dirty and has many bacterias and claims he doesn't share his water since he don't know where the other dog's mouth has been. I mean if the dog is going to be so cautious about the other dog's germs since he doesn't know where his mouth has been, why is he drinking from the toilet?

      The lyrics of the song "Ironic", by Alanis Morissette are an example of irony. The whole song talks about many ironies in life, and situations that happen to people unexpectedly. For example the first irony is, "An old man turned ninety-eight/He won the lottery and died the next day". These two lines express how ironic this man's life was, he won the lottery a day before he died; he probably played it his whole life and got it for no reason he didn't even get to enjoy it. Another example is, "A no smoking sign on your cigarette break". This line is ironic because a smoker would wait anxiously for their cigarette break, and to find out that is prohibited to smoke, it's pretty ironic. The last irony example is, "A traffic jam when you are already late". This is ironic if you are already late instead of finding ways that are going to make your lateness worst you want to find ways on how to save time, and get to wherever you want to get as fast as possible. A traffic jam stops you since your stuck and have no way out but stay in traffic. Another example of irony is the Social Network video, the young lady is talking about how she read an article on how older people are very antisocial, and how her parents only have 19 friends on Facebook, while she has more than a 100. The irony of this video is while she is at home being "social" stuck using a computer with her internet friends her parents are outside having fun with actual friends doing many activities. So instead the antisocial ones are the young people not to older.

              Overall, irony is in everyone's life without it being noticed. Something ironic could be a phrase, someone's actions, a video, a song, or even an accident. Irony is even part of my life, I tend to find myself contradicting myself plenty of times a day with the things I say, which end up being ironic. The articles listed above are several examples of different types of irony, from the "Richard Cory" poem. Him being so wanted and envied by everyone in his neighborhood and then him killing himself.