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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
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 18
Explanation and Analysis—Brotherly Love:
When Huck is spending time with the Grangerfords and learning about their violent, decades-long feud with the Shepherdsons, he joins them at church. His description of this experience contains situational irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness.
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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 23
Explanation and Analysis—Jim's Humanity:
After several chapters in which Huck is focused on describing the duke and the king's antics, his attention turns to Jim, whom he witnesses mourning over being separated from his family. Huck's observations contain situational irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.
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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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Chapter 33
Explanation and Analysis—Huck Judging Tom:
In a strange moment near the end of Huckleberry Finn, Huck reveals to his friend Tom Sawyer that he has been helping Jim escape from slavery and, rather than judge or chastise Huck for it, Tom decides to help him. Instead of appreciating this offer, Huck judges Tom negatively for it, and his narration his internal reaction is an example of situational irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell, considerable, in my estimation. Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a nigger stealer!
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