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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
Key Examples in How the Other Half Lives
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Property Value:
In Chapter 1, Riis takes the time to recount a recent case of landlord exploitation, lest people assert that such evils are of "a day that is happily past and may safely be forgotten." Riis utilizes his trademark verbal irony in this passage when discussing the landlord’s actions:
The fire made homeless ten families, who had paid an average of $5 a month for their mean little cubby-holes. The owner himself told me that it was fully insured for $800, though it brought him in $600 a year in rent. He evidently considered himself especially entitled to be pitied for losing such valuable property.
Related Themes:
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—The Blind Landlord:
In Chapter 4, Riis recounts the story of a landlord whose tenements receive the nickname "Blind Man's Alley" on account of the fact that many blind, impoverished men come to find homes there. Riis quite clearly chooses to relate this story to his readership on account of the glaring situational irony it introduces:
Unlock with LitCharts A+"Old Dan" made a big fortune—he told me once four hundred thousand dollars—out of his alley and the surrounding tenements, only to grow blind himself in extreme old age, sharing in the end the chief hardship of the wretched beings whose lot he had stubbornly refused to better that he might increase his wealth.
Related Themes:
