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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
Act 1
Explanation and Analysis—Pure and Happy Childhood:
Toward the end of the first act, Madame Ranevsky remains overcome by emotion at being back in her childhood home. Drifting in and out of flashbacks in her dialogue, she apostrophizes her childhood and the cherry orchard. Although Madame Ranevsky seems to genuinely believe that nothing has changed, the audience finds her statements ironic, given that other characters have revealed that a great degree has changed since she was home last.
MADAME RANEVSKY [looking out into the garden]. Oh, my childhood, my pure and happy childhood! I used to sleep in this nursery. I used to look out from here into the garden. Happiness awoke with me every morning! and the orchard was just the same then as it is now; nothing is altered.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Something Will Happen:
Despite his enduring financial distress, Pishtchik always seems to come by money when he needs it. In the first act, he foreshadows that all will go well with him at the end of the play when he says that "something will happen." Although the audience struggles to believe that he will find a way out of his latest debt, the fourth act gives rise to situational irony when Pishtchik makes money off of the discovery of a special kind of clay on his land.
Unlock with LitCharts A+PISHTCHIK. I’ll find it somewhere. [Laughing.] I never lose hope. Last time I thought: ‘Now I really am done for, I’m a ruined man,’ when behold, they ran a railway over my land and paid me compensation. And so it’ll be again; something will happen, if not today, then to-morrow.
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Act 2
Explanation and Analysis—A Clever Fellow:
Early in the second act, Charlotte combines verbal irony with paradox as she ridicules Ephikhodof on her way off stage.
Unlock with LitCharts A+CHARLOTTE. That’s done. I’m off. [Slinging the rifle over her shoulder.] You’re a clever fellow, Ephikhódof, and very alarming. Women must fall madly in love with you. Brrr! [Going.]
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Act 4
Explanation and Analysis—Something Will Happen:
Despite his enduring financial distress, Pishtchik always seems to come by money when he needs it. In the first act, he foreshadows that all will go well with him at the end of the play when he says that "something will happen." Although the audience struggles to believe that he will find a way out of his latest debt, the fourth act gives rise to situational irony when Pishtchik makes money off of the discovery of a special kind of clay on his land.
Unlock with LitCharts A+PISHTCHIK. I’ll find it somewhere. [Laughing.] I never lose hope. Last time I thought: ‘Now I really am done for, I’m a ruined man,’ when behold, they ran a railway over my land and paid me compensation. And so it’ll be again; something will happen, if not today, then to-morrow.
Related Themes:
