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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
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—Banker Hiding the Note:
At the end of the story, after the banker has learned an important life lesson from the lawyer about the meaninglessness of material wealth (and seemingly grown emotionally), he immediately reverts to his morally corrupt ways—an example of situational irony. The irony comes across in the final lines of the story:
Never at any other time, not even after his terrible losses on the Exchange, had he felt such contempt for himself as now. Coming home, he lay down on his bed, but agitation and tears kept him long from sleep...
The next morning the poor watchman came running to him and told him that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climbing through the window into the garden […]. To avoid unnecessary rumours he took the paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return, locked it in his safe.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Lawyer Leaving Early:
In an example of situational irony, the lawyer decides to end his 15-year imprisonment just five minutes early, forfeiting the two million rubles he would have earned from winning the bet. The irony comes across in both the lawyer’s note to the banker where he reveals his decision and in the banker’s response, as seen in the following passage (which opens with an excerpt from the lawyer’s letter):
Unlock with LitCharts A+“That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I waive the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and which I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and thus shall violate the agreement.”
When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed the head of the strange man, and began to weep.
Related Themes:
