Things Fall Apart

by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart: Situational Irony 1 key example

Chapter 23
Explanation and Analysis—Treatment in Captivity:

In Chapter 23, Achebe utilizes situational irony as a device to shed light on the White colonizers' duplicity:

[The District Commissioner] told the court messengers, when he left the guardroom, to treat the men with respect because they were the leaders of Umuofia. They said, 'Yes, sir,' and saluted. . . . The six men ate nothing throughout that day and the next. They were not even given any water to drink, and they could not go out to urinate . . . .