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Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Key Examples in A Moveable Feast
Chapter 13: The Man Who Was Marked for Death
Explanation and Analysis—Walsh's Con:
In Chapter 13, Hemingway recalls a time when a colleague, Ernest Walsh, convinced him that he was guaranteed to win an award if he submitted work to Walsh's new magazine. The chapter ends on a note of dramatic irony when Hemingway and James Joyce, years later, realize that Walsh used pathos to manipulate both of them:
One day, years later, I met Joyce who was walking along the Boulevard St.-Germain after having been to a matinee alone....
“Now about Walsh,” Joyce said.
“A such and such alive is a such and such dead,” I said.
“Did he promise you that award?” Joyce asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought so,” Joyce said.
“Did he promise it to you?”
“Yes,” Joyce said. After a time he asked, “Do you think he promised it to Pound?”
“I don’t know.”
“Best not to ask him,” Joyce said. We left it at that.
Related Themes:
Chapter 18: Hawks Do Not Share
Explanation and Analysis—Hemingway and Fitzgerald:
Hemingway devotes a great deal of space in the memoir to F. Scott Fitzgerald, positioning his friend as a foil for himself. In Chapter 18, Hemingway contrasts the two of them by commenting on Fitzgerald's ironic dissatisfaction with Paris:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He was always trying to work. Each day he would try and fail. He laid the failure to Paris, the town best organized for a writer to write in that there is, and he thought always that there would be some place where he and Zelda could have a good life together again.
Related Themes:
Paris Sketches: The Pilot Fish and the Rich
Explanation and Analysis—Pilot Fish:
In Paris Sketches: The Pilot Fish, Hemingway relies on an extended metaphor to express a profound sense of regret and, ironically, betrayal over the way his marriage with Hadley ended:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The pilot fish [...] is always going somewhere, or coming from somewhere, and he is never around for very long. He enters and leaves politics or the theater in the same way he enters and leaves countries and people’s lives in his early days [...] Nothing ever catches him and it is only those who trust him who are caught and killed. He has the irreplaceable early training of the bastard and a latent and long denied love of money. He ends up rich himself, having moved one dollar’s width to the right with every dollar that he made.
Related Themes:
