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Unreliable Narrator
Definition of Verbal Irony
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging outside and someone remarks "what... read full definition
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging... read full definition
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean... read full definition
Key Examples in A Moveable Feast
Paris Sketches: Birth of a New School
Explanation and Analysis—Plank in a Sawmill:
In Paris Sketches: Birth of a New School, Hemingway tries to ignore a young man who keeps interrupting him while he is writing. Hemingway uses a simile and verbal irony to give the reader a sense of how irritating and vacuous he finds the young man:
I found I could go on writing and that it was no worse than other noises; certainly better than Ezra learning to play the bassoon.
“Suppose you wanted to be a writer and feel it in every part of your body and it just wouldn’t come.[...] Suppose once it had come like an irresistible torrent and then it left you mute and silent.”
Better than mute and noisy, I thought, and went on writing. He was in full cry now and the unbelievable sentences were soothing as the noise of a plank being violated in the sawmill.
Related Themes:
