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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
Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Pap's Racism:
Near the beginning of the novel, Pap—Huck’s abusive alcoholic father—gets drunk and bemoans the fact that a Black professor is allowed to vote, creating a moment of dramatic irony:
“They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could vote when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to?”
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Chapter 22
Explanation and Analysis—The Circus:
In a playful example of dramatic irony, Huck goes to the circus for the first time and finds himself enraptured by the performance, believing the ringmaster to have been successfully fooled by a performer who pretended to be a drunk audience member:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest ringmaster you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody. Well, I felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but I wouldn’t ’a’ been in that ringmaster’s place, not for a thousand dollars.
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Chapter 31
Explanation and Analysis—Huck Helping Jim:
An example of dramatic irony that is present throughout the novel is Huck’s belief that, by helping Jim escape from slavery, he is committing a sin or doing something wrong. As Twain wrote the book many years after the Civil War—and the official end of slavery in the United States—he assumes readers will understand that Huck is actually doing the right thing in helping Jim. It is this tension between what readers understand and what Huck understands that creates dramatic irony.
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