Monday, December 24, 2012

What are some verbal ironies in Chapters 1-3 of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird?

As a literary device, irony is the general name given to
such techniques that involve surprising, interesting, or amusing contradictions.  With
verbal irony, words are used to indicate the opposite of their
usual meaning.  Here are some examples of this type of irony (the verbal irony is how
Scout expresses her comments on the situations, which may in themselves also be
ironic):


Chapter
One


1.  Scout as narrator relates that her
father went to Montgomery to learn law; later when he was admitted to the bar, he
returned to Maycomb and began his practice.  However, during his first five years,
Atticus "practiced economy more than anything."
[What Scout really means is that Atticus had little business
and had to economise because he was poor.]


2. So
Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie
Crawford
, a neighborhood scold. [In actuality, Jem
is
misinformed
.]


Chapter
Two


3. After Scout reads for Miss Caroline,
the teacher tells her that her father does not know how to teach.  Scout
narrates,



I
never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been
wallowing illicitly in the daily
papers.



[Scout
does nothing wrong when she reads the papers  She says this to ridicule Miss Caroline's
comment about Atticus.]


4.  When she is scolded for
writing, rather than printing, Scout remarks, "Calpurnia was to
blame for this."
[Thanks to Calpurnia who placed the written
letters on a tablet before her, Scout has practiced handwriting on rainy days and
learned before third grade.]


Chapter
Three


5. After her scoldings by Miss
Caroline and Calpurnia, Scout thinks of running away if she must refrain from reading
and writing.  However, she remarks,


readability="6">

By late afternoon most of
my traveling plans were complete.
[ She has abandoned thoughts
of running off]



For, she and
Jem race each other to greet their father who comes from his
office.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Calculate tan(x-y), if sin x=1/2 and sin y=1/3. 0

We'll write the formula of the tangent of difference of 2 angles. tan (x-y) = (tan x - tan y)/(1 + tan x*tan y) ...