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Literary Devices
Definition of Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given situation, and that of the... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a... read full definition
Dramatic Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Jimmy Saving Agatha:
In an example of both dramatic and situational irony, Annabel pleads for Jimmy—who she believes to be a simple shoemaker named Ralph—to save her niece Agatha from being trapped inside of her father’s safe at the Elmore Bank. The layers of irony come across in the following passage, as Annabel and her family realize Agatha is trapped:
Agatha’s mother, frantic now, beat the door of the vault with her hands. Somebody wildly suggested dynamite. Annabel turned to Jimmy, her large eyes full of anguish, but not yet despairing. To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.
“Can’t you do something, Ralph—try, won’t you?”
He looked at her with a queer, soft smile on his lips and in his keen eyes.
This scene is an example of dramatic irony because readers know that “Ralph” is actually Jimmy Valentine, a seasoned criminal and notorious safe-cracker, while Annabel and her family do not. Thus, when Annabel begs Jimmy to “do something” and he “look[s] at her with a queer, soft smile on his lips,” readers are in on the tragic comedy of this moment with him: Jimmy knows in this moment that he can either keep Annabel in his life and let the child die or lose Annabel and save the girl by revealing his past identity as a professional burglar.
The situational irony here is that Jimmy is being asked to use his safe-cracking tools the very day that he has planned to ship them off to a friend as a sign of officially letting go of his criminal ways. After a year of good behavior and building a normal life with the woman he loves, he finds himself forced back into acting as the thieving man he used to be.
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