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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
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Henchard's Success:
The grand situational irony of the beginning of the novel is that Michael Henchard, rather than being punished for drunkenly "selling" his wife and daughter for five guineas, has become a sober, successful, and seemingly happy man by the third chapter. This is framed in Chapter 4 as a surprise for his wife, who returns with her daughter to find him, and the reader feels the unfairness of the situation for Susan keenly:
Time, the magician, had wrought much here. Watching him, and thus thinking of past days, she became so moved that she shrank back against the jamb of the wagon-office doorway to which the steps gave access, the shadow from it conveniently hiding her features. She forgot her daughter till a touch from Elizabeth-Jane aroused her. “Have you seen him, mother?” whispered the girl. “Yes, yes,” answered her companion hastily. “I have seen him, and it is enough for me! Now I only want to go—pass away—die.”
Related Themes:
Chapter 27
Explanation and Analysis—Henchard's Suspicions:
In Chapter 27, Hardy uses dramatic irony to highlight the difference between Henchard's perceived reasons for his gradual social decline and the real underlying problem of his own poor character and decisions. In this moment, Henchard sits wondering if he has been cursed by someone, when the real reasons for his "monstrous loss" are actually quite obvious:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“I wonder,” he asked himself with eerie misgiving; “I wonder if it can be that somebody has been roasting a waxen image of me, or stirring an unholy brew to confound me! I don’t believe in such power; and yet—what if they should ha’ been doing it!” Even he could not admit that the perpetrator, if any, might be Farfrae. These isolated hours of superstition came to Henchard in time of moody depression, when all his practical largeness of view had oozed out of him.
Related Themes:
