Hop-Frog uses verbal irony in his speech to the king and his ministers, and this ultimately foreshadows his later plans for revenge. When asked by the king to pick for him a costume to wear to a masquerade, Hop-Frog suggests that he and his ministers wear matching “ourang-outang” (an archaic spelling of “orangutan”) costumes, as they will frighten the guests:
“The beauty of the game,” continued Hop-Frog, “lies in the fright it occasions among the women.” “Capital!” roared in chorus the monarch and his ministry. “I will equip you as ourang-outangs,” proceeded the dwarf; “leave all that to me. The resemblance shall be so striking, that the company of masqueraders will take you for real beasts—and of course, they will be as much terrified as astonished.” “Oh, this is exquisite!” exclaimed the king. “Hop-Frog! I will make a man of you.”
He presents his plan as a harmless game or prank which will terrify the guests but entertain the king himself. However, his actual motives are far darker, as he intends to kill the king and his ministers for their longstanding abuse of himself and Trippetta. His words, then, contain ironic doubled meanings. The guests will indeed experience “fright” at the masquerade, though the object of their terror will be the sight of the king and his men burning to death, not the orangutan costumes. Hop-Frog, then, does not lie, but rather, takes advantage of the ambiguities of language. His words here foreshadow the ending of the story, in which the guests are indeed “as much terrified as astonished,” though not for the reasons the king expects.
At various points in the story, the unnamed narrator, who claims to have witnessed the events of the tale directly, uses verbal irony in order to subtly critique the king’s court and the culture fostered there. When describing Hop-Frog’s background, the narrator states that:
I am not able to say, with precision, from what country Hop-Frog originally came. It was from some barbarous region, however, that no person ever heard of—a vast distance from the court of our king. Hop-Frog, and a young girl very little less dwarfish than himself (although of exquisite proportions, and a marvellous dancer), had been forcibly carried off from their respective homes in adjoining provinces, and sent as presents to the king, by one of his ever-victorious generals.
Using deeply ironic language, the narrator dismisses Hop-Frog’s home nation as “some barbarous region” that is so unimportant that “no person ever heard of it.” The narrator further attributes this lack of prominence to its “vast distance from the court of our king.” With pointed sarcasm, the narrator assumes the voice of a patriotic member of the king’s court, even praising one of his generals as “ever-victorious.” The contrast between the narrator’s language here and elsewhere in the story attests to the sense of irony that suffuses his speech. The king’s court is itself “barbarous” in its cruelty towards Hop-Frog and Trippetta, who were “forcibly carried off” from their home nations to work as jesters at court. The narrator’s apparent praise, then, is mocking and insincere.
