1. No category

Irony
• Irony – the difference between the way
something appears and what is actually true,
or what one expects to happen and what
actually happens.
• Verbal Irony: when a speaker means
something totally different than what he or
she is saying (sarcasm)
Verbal Irony in Animal Farm
Ex: The cat “was telling [the birds] that all
animals were now comrades and that any
sparrow who chose could come and perch on
her paw…”
What does she really mean?
Situational Irony: A contradiction between
what a character expects to happen and what
actually happens.
Ex: A man wins the lottery and expects to have a
perfect life. Instead, everyone he has ever
known asks him for money and his life is
worse than before.
Situational Irony in Animal Farm
Napoleon “announced that from now on the Sunday-morning
meetings would come to an end…In future all questions
relating to the working of the farm would be settled by a
special committee of pigs, presided over by himself.”
• What did the animals expect to happen when they
rebelled against Mr. Jones?
• What actually happened?
Dramatic Irony—the reader knows something
that the characters do not, giving words and
actions additional meaning.
Ex: At the end of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo kills himself because
he thinks that Juliet is dead, but the reader knows that she is
really alive.
Dramatic Irony in Animal Farm
• Because the animals are so naïve, we understand a lot
more than they do about what is happening on the farm.
• Our knowledge of the historical background of the novel
also gives us a greater understanding of the events in the
story.
Ex: “You did not suppose, surely, that there was ever a ruling
against beds…The rule was against sheets, which are a human
invention. We have removed the sheets from the farm house
beds, and sleep between blankets.”
• What do we know that the animals don’t know (or can’t
remember)? What are the real motivations of the pigs?