Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Situational Irony 1 key example

Chapter 8 - The Queen's Croquet-Ground
Explanation and Analysis—Off With His Head!:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland contains a number of ironic moments. In Chapter 8, to get rid of the Cheshire cat, the Queen declares "Off with his head!" but the executioner insists that this is impossible:

The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at his time of life.