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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
Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Fire:
If the McClellans’ house is the story’s main character, then fire is its central antagonist. After a falling tree bough crashes through the window and sends cleaning solvent over the stove, the kitchen immediately catches flame. The night fire is untamed and uncontrollable—it tears through the house despite the technological devices’ most desperate attempts to contain it.
Related Themes:
Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Teasdale's Poem:
One of the story’s central ironies lies in its tension between promises of nature’s recovery and manmade destruction. As night descends upon the McClellans’ household, the home’s robotic voice reads aloud Sara Teasdale’s poem:
Unlock with LitCharts A+There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Related Themes:
