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Irony In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Decent Essays

What is the point of irony? What really is irony? Is it more mockery or sarcasm?
Most writers use irony to make their readers think. In the three short stories “Because My Father Always Said He Was The Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ At Woodstock,” by Sherman Alexie, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor, and “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, there are numerous examples of irony. While all three of the stories have unalike plots, the authors all used similarly ironic situations in their writings. Alexie filled his story about his father with situational irony. For instance, before he was born his father was a hippie, and in a photograph that was …show more content…

To start the story off, the family is going on a vacation to Florida, but the grandmother didn’t want them to go there because there was a criminal on the loose. It would be expected that the grandmother would protest and refuse to go, though later the next day when it was time to go she was the first one in the car. “The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go” (O’Connor 1). In conclusion to this, the grandmother wanted to go somewhere else on vacation, but ended up settling with Florida. In a second example, he grandmother said that she would never take her child near a criminal; one would assume that she would keep her son safe. Even though in the end, the grandmother ended up leading her family to the criminal that was on the loose. “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (O’Connor 1). The fact that the grandmother said she wouldn’t be able to answer to her conscience if she did lead her children to the criminal is also ironic because in the end the grandmother was murdered along with the rest of her family, so ironically, she didn’t end up having to answer to her conscience after …show more content…

In the beginning of the story, the family in the story finds an angel in their yard, but its arrival wasn’t graceful at all like it would be expected to be, the angel had actually fallen to the ground and was stuck in the mud. “He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings” (Marquez 1). A reader may think that the angel would be dressed nicely and decent looking, but he was an old sick man. In addition to this example, Marquez used irony in the end of the story when the angel was finally healthy enough to fly away. In the beginning, when the angel had come to the family’s house, people had come from all around just to see the angel. Everyone had paid the family to meet him, so the family had enough money to build a new house and live a better life. Once the angel was able to fly away, the family was actually relieved that he was gone, not relieved that he was better but relieved because he was finally out of her way. “Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last few houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture” (Marquez 4). It would be thought that the family would be happy for him even after all that he had done for

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