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Definition of Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given situation, and that of the... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a... read full definition
Dramatic Irony
Explanation and Analysis—City Editors:
Porter uses dramatic irony and simile to undercut surface appearances and reveal characters as shaped by cultural performance. One such example occurs in Miranda’s observation of her editor Bill:
Bill had been raging about, chewing his half-smoked cigar, his hair standing up in a brush, his eyes soft and lambent but wild, like a stag’s. He would never, thought Miranda, be more than fourteen years old if he lived for a century, which he would not, at the rate he was going. He behaved exactly like city editors in the moving pictures, even to the chewed cigar. Had he formed his style on the films, or had scenario writers seized once for all on the type Bill in its inarguable purity?
The line “He behaved exactly like city editors in the moving pictures” uses a simile to compare Bill’s behavior to a familiar cinematic archetype. In early Hollywood films, the “city editor” was often portrayed as a brash, overworked, cigar-chomping boss—a caricature of masculine authority. By drawing this comparison, Porter frames Bill’s bluster not as natural temperament but as performance, shaped by media conventions. His chewed cigar, dramatic gestures, and outbursts feel rehearsed, as though he were acting out a script.
This simile also introduces a layer of dramatic irony. While Bill may see himself as a forceful newsroom figure, Miranda—and by extension, the reader—sees the artifice. Her internal commentary exposes the gap between his self-image and reality: he is not the seasoned authority he pretends to be, but rather a grown man posturing like a teenager trying to imitate what he thinks a powerful adult looks like. His behavior is more theatrical than substantive, making his authority feel exaggerated and hollow. Porter uses this irony to critique how people adopt personas modeled on popular culture, suggesting that identity itself can become a kind of performance.
