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Hyperbole
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
Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Michael’s Clothes:
In an example of dramatic irony, Nora and Cathleen (and readers) are aware from the beginning of the play that Michael has most likely drowned, but his mother Maurya is not. When the two girls receive a bundle of clothing from the young priest—who tells them that they were found on a dead man off the coast of mainland Ireland and could be Michael’s—they decide to hide it from their mother. When Nora asks if they should open it, Cathleen responds:
Give me the ladder, and I’ll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won’t know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she’ll be going down to see would he be floating from the east.
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Explanation and Analysis—Bartley’s Death:
Bartley’s death in the story is an example of situational irony for a few different reasons. First, as Nora points out, the young priest told Maurya before Bartley decided to leave for the sea that “the Almighty God wouldn’t leave her destitute with no son living.” The priest’s certainty that Bartley will survive—and his invocation of God, in whom Maurya places (at least part of) her faith—makes Bartley’s death ironic and also deeply tragic. In having the young priest be incorrect, Synge is also highlighting how, for island-dwellers like those on the Aran Islands, the sea is more powerful than God.
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