Irony

Holy macaroni! Yowza! Good grief! Shucks! Yikes! Holy

toledo!People sure make a lot of

mistakes with IRONY!

Have you ever heard someone say “it was so

ironic!”?

“You sound ridiculous!”

no student will ever leave my class and not know

what it means for something to be ironic.

Let’s start!

Verbal Irony

One thing is said, but another is meant.

Example: Mrs. Rush has dyed her hair blue and gotten her

nose pierced. She looks ridiculous, but you tell her,

“wow, you look great!”

Example: your girlfriend dumped you, your mom

grounded you, and you failed your reading test. I ask how

your day is going and you say, “super dooper!! Best day

ever.”

Sarcasm is a type of verbal irony, but not the only type. Sarcasm always is meant to be insulting. Verbal irony is

not always an insult.

Example: you are eating a delicious meal of piping hot

steamed crabs covered in old bay. Your mom says, “how

are they?” You, while stuffing your face with backfin meat

and smiling, say “awful!”

Dramatic Irony

The audience or reader knows something that a character in a

story does not know.

Example: You know your friend has a “kick me” sign on his back, but he does not. All

day long Ms. Madgar is kicking him, but he has no

idea why.

Example: You’re watching a horror movie and you know

the character is about to enter a room that the killer is in, but the character doesn’t know it.

Irony of Situation

The actual results of a situation are completely opposite from the

expected results.

This is the hardest one to understand!

Example: a doctor is supposed to save lives, right? An ironic situation would be a

doctor who goes through medical school, passes all his

exams, gets his M.D., and then kills every patient he ever

treats.

Example: a town decides that having guns is a really bad thing. The

government believes that guns kill people and that they are too dangerous. So the government passes a law that bans all

guns from everyone. It works, and within one year, every single person in town,

including police and military, has thrown away their guns. On the day the last gun is destroyed, the town is invaded by flesh eating monsters whose only weakness is guns and everyone in the town is eaten.

Example: there are two friends. One is very fat. He eats deep-fried bacon every night for dinner, never gets off the couch except to get more food, smokes, drinks, and never, ever bathes. The other friend never smokes, never drinks, exercises every day, is extremely good looking,

showers, takes vitamins, and eats only the healthiest foods. The fit and trim

friend dies at 25 of a heart attack. The lazy friend lives to be 120 and marries a

Ravens Cheerleader.

Irony of situation is NOT coincidence! An example of coincidence would be if you went to buy a new shirt for a

hot date, and happened to run into your date at the mall

doing the same thing. Coincidence, but not ironic.

Irony is not just bad luck either. Bad luck would be if you emptied out your entire life’s savings to get a new

Nintendo Wii system only to get home and find out that it won’t plug into your TV. It’s

not ironic - just bad luck.

Ironic Images

Here are some pictures of situations that are ironic!

The End! Now, you are a

master of irony!