Irving uses dramatic irony to highlight how Ichabod Crane is disconnected from reality. One key example is the gap between Ichabod’s estimation of his own skills as a singer and dancer and the audience’s estimation:
Ichabod prided himself on his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fiber about him was idle; and to see his loosely-hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought Saint Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person.
Ichabod is proud of his dancing skills, but the way the narrator, Diedrich Knickerbocker, describes Ichabod in motion is far from flattering. In this passage, he comes across more as a frenetic, “clattering” bag of bones than a suave suitor. The reference to Saint Vitus is another subtle dig from Knickerbocker. Catholics invoke Saint Vitus against a neurological disorder called “chorea”—also known as “St. Vitus Dance”—and one of chorea’s symptoms is uncontrollable jerking of the limbs. The contrast between reality and Ichabod's self-perception encourages readers to distrust Ichabod’s worldview, from his certainty that he is succeeding with Katrina to his belief in the supernatural.
The dramatic irony in the dancing scene is an example of how "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" blends fact and fiction. Knickerbocker has a vastly different account of Ichabod’s dancing than Ichabod does, and the reader can only guess at the effect Ichabod's frenzied movement is having on Katrina, or on the Black people who are watching him through the windows. Irving writes that they are “gazing with delight at the scene,” but is this another one of Ichabod’s delusions? Are their “delighted” smiles really signs of derision? And who is Knickerbocker to tell the reader how these Black observers felt watching white landowners at a lavish party? During the dancing scene, the supposedly true historical account that is "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" breaks into a series of disjointed, opposing fictions.
Throughout “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Irving uses verbal irony to give readers a more critical view of the story’s characters and setting. He employs this technique to introduce his protagonist and the Sleepy Hollow community:
In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane[.]
At the time of this story’s publication, the United States was only a few decades old. By labeling the events of 30 years ago “remote American history,” Irving draws attention to the nation's newness and its resulting lack of “authentic” history. He continues to use verbal irony in his portrait of Ichabod Crane. Describing Ichabod’s lanky physique, Irving writes:
The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person.
This sentence is a deliberate understatement, intended to highlight Ichabod’s crane-like features, from his exaggeratedly skinny body to his long, beak-like nose. Understatements like these are a specific form of verbal irony called “litotes.”
Verbal irony draws attention to the fact that the story is being transmitted through a storyteller, whose personal agendas and biases are unknown to readers. While “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” presents itself as a historical account, frequent use of verbal irony encourages readers to question the tale’s veracity.
