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Imagery
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
Chapter 5: I Am Sent Away From Home
Explanation and Analysis—Stolen Meal:
Dickens uses dramatic irony early in the novel as a way of highlighting young David Copperfield’s innocence and gullibility. For example, when David travels alone to Salem House in Chapter 5, a waiter takes advantage of his good nature and ready willingness to believe everything he is told:
I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking [my ale], if he thought he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet. But it didn’t hurt him. On the contrary, I thought he seemed the fresher for it.
Related Themes:
Chapter 11: I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don't Like It
Explanation and Analysis—Prison Comforts:
Dickens uses situational irony to critique the practice of imprisoning debtors, something that happened to his own father. For example, in Chapter 11, the narrator writes of the Micawbers:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] they lived more comfortably in the prison than they had lived for a long while out of it.
Related Themes:
Chapter 34: My Aunt Astonishes Me
Explanation and Analysis—Upon My Property:
Verbal irony plays less of a role in David Copperfield than in some other Dickens's novels because there is no omniscient narrator to comment wryly on the characters from a remove. Nonetheless, verbal irony is one of Dickens's trademarks, and an example of it can be found in Chapter 34, when David finds his aunt in his apartment:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘Let me draw the sofa here, or the easy chair, aunt,’ said I. ‘Why should you be so uncomfortable?’
‘Thank you, Trot,’ replied my aunt, ‘I prefer to sit upon my property.’ Here my aunt looked hard at Mrs Crupp, and observed, ‘We needn’t trouble you to wait, ma’am.’
Related Themes:
Chapter 39: Wickfield and Heep
Explanation and Analysis—Uriah's "Apology":
In Chapter 39, Uriah upsets Mr. Wickfield and claims that he is entitled to marry Agnes due to his upward mobility. In the morning he claims to have smoothed things over with Mr. Wickfield while also using a metaphor to suggest that he has already made sexual advances toward Agnes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I obliged myself to say that I was glad he had made his apology.
‘Oh, to be sure!’ said Uriah. ‘When a person’s umble, you know, what’s an apology? So easy! I say! I suppose,’ with a jerk, ‘you have sometimes plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?’
‘I suppose I have,’ I replied.
‘I did that last night,’ said Uriah; ‘but it’ll ripen yet! It only wants attending to. I can wait!’
Related Themes:
Chapter 45: Mr. Dick Fulfills My Aunt's Prediction
Explanation and Analysis—No Disparity in Marriage:
In Chapter 45, Annie explains why she is glad she did not marry Jack Maldon, and her words stick with David for a reason he can't work out. There is dramatic irony in this moment because to both the reader and to the adult narrator, it is obvious why Annie's words resonate with him:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously attending to what followed, as if they had some particular interest, or some strange application that I could not divine. ‘There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose’—‘no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
Related Themes:
