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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 7
Explanation and Analysis—More Sugar?:
In Chapter 7, Millat, Magid, and Irie have a peculiar conversation with J. P. Hamilton, an old White man they visit for a school community initiative. He terrifies the children with stories of his military deployment in Congo, where he claimed to be able to recognize African men by the whiteness of their teeth. He then expounds on the importance of teeth and dental hygiene, but ironically offers the children more sugar just as he does so:
Mr. Hamilton leaned back contemplatively in his chair. “One sometimes forgets the significance of one’s teeth. We’re not like the lower animals—teeth replaced regularly and all that—we’re of the mammals, you see. And mammals only get two chances, with teeth. More sugar?”
The children, mindful of their two chances, declined.
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Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Children and Scientists:
In Chapter 16, Marcus considers the state of his career while waiting to meet with Magid. He notes the irony between science fiction and science. Science fiction includes inventions far beyond what real science is capable of, while the profound achievements in science that are worthy of science fiction often go unnoticed by anyone but experts. He describes this in reference to his son Oscar's love of fictional robots:
Unlock with LitCharts A+While the robots in Oscar’s mind were singing, dancing, and empathizing with his every joy and fear, over at MIT some poor bastard was slowly and painstakingly trying to get a machine to re-create the movements of a single human thumb. On the flip side of the coin, the simplest biological facts, the structure of animal cells for instance, were a mystery to all but fourteen-year-old children and scientists like himself; the former spending their time drawing them in class, the latter injecting them with foreign DNA.
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Chapter 20
Explanation and Analysis—In a Perfect World:
At the novel's climax in Chapter 20, it is revealed that Dr. Perret is alive and has been mentoring Marcus in the Futuremouse project. After this revelation, the narrator flashes back to the war to reveal how he survived. Archie has the doctor cornered but hesitates to kill him. Dr. Perret tries to urge Archie to act boldly, referencing the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre to spur him on. Archie waffles, eventually proposing to flip a coin, and if it lands heads, he will execute Dr. Perret. But in a moment of situational irony, Dr. Perret shoots Archie before he can even find out how the coin landed:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The coin rose and flipped as a coin would rise and flip every time in a perfect world, flashing its light and then revealing its dark enough times to mesmerize a man. Then, at some point in its triumphant ascension, it began to arc, and the arc went wrong, and Archibald realized that it was not coming back to him at all but going behind him, a fair way behind him, and he turned round to watch it fall in the dirt. He was bending to pick it up when a shot rang out, and he felt a blistering pain in his right thigh.
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