Previous
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 2
Explanation and Analysis—Arms Pinwheeling:
During Willie's riotous speech in Upton, Tiny Duffy, his political rival, tries to come on stage and contradict him to the audience. But Willie, drunk and hungover from the previous night and in a fit of passion, pushes Duffy off the stage, and he falls in quite humorous fashion:
I don't know whether Willie meant to do it. But anyway, he did it. He didn't exactly shove Duffy off the platform. He just started Duffy doing a dance along the edge, a kind of delicate, feather-toed, bemused, slow-motion adagio accompanied by arms pinwheeling around a face which was like a surprised custard pie with a hole scooped in the middle of the meringue, and the hole was Duffy's mouth, but no sound came out of it. There wasn't a sound over that five-acre tract of sweating humanity. They just watched Duffy do his dance.
Duffy, overweight and bumbling, tumbles off the stage in a hilarious dance, face like a pie, "arms pinwheeling." Simple comic relief is one purpose of this image. It is also a moment of situational irony. The audience attending the speech, as well as the reader, expects a political event, generally a clean, buttoned-up affair governed by decorum and tradition, especially in the 1920s. But that audience gets anything but decorum and tradition: Willie, sick and drunk, gives a wild speech and then shoves his main rival off the stage like a slapstick comedy performance. Jack makes a meal of describing how Duffy falls off the stage, emphasizing the irony.
Willie's shove here also serves as imagery. This moment, as Willie triumphantly dispatches Duffy off the stage, represents Willie and Duffy's political careers. Here, as Willie's rousing speech at Upton starts to propel him toward greater success, he literally removes Duffy from the campaign, just as Willie's continued success will prevent Duffy's from rising further.
Related Themes:
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Delicate Little Root:
In Chapter 5, Jack researches the Irwin case and digs deep into the judge's past. Slowly, he starts to figure out the story of the bribe that got Irwin hired by the American Electric Power Company: "I was not prepared to say that I knew what God and man are, but I was getting ready to make a shrewd guess about a particular man. But just a guess." Jack describes his findings using a delicate metaphor:
I plucked the flower out of its cranny and discovered an astonishing botanical fact. I discovered that its delicate little root, with many loops and kinks, ran all the way to New York City, where it tapped the lush dung heap called the Madison Corporation. The flower in the cranny was the Southern Belle Fuel Company. So I plucked another little flower called the American Electric Power Company, and discovered that its little delicate root tapped the same dung heap.
Jack describes his research process as pulling up a little flower, which represents a small fact. Here, that small fact is that Irwin foreclosed on his plantation only a couple of weeks before a "final reorganization" at American Electric. Then, Jack follows the long root of that little flower to the source of the situation. Here, Jack learns that Southern Belle and American Electric were owned by the same corporation, which leads him to suspect the source of the bribery that moved Irwin to his lucrative position at American Electric.
This metaphor is a typical case of Jack's sarcastic, caustic tone, especially when describing those with whom he disagrees. His contempt is evident in the verbal irony with which he refers to the grand Irwin conspiracy as a "delicate little root." This metaphor also plays off a common trope that information, especially illicit political information, is represented by "dirt." Here, Jack follows a root through that dirt to find his information. Compare this to an earlier image when Jack learns from Adam that Irwin was once broke. Jack says of his tip from Adam that he "speared it up from deep mud." Willie assigns Jack to look for "dirt" on Irwin, a metaphor which Jack, as a narrator, utilizes multiple times in different ways.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—The Man Who Got Hanged:
In Chapter 5, Jack visits the home of the Scholarly Attorney and meets George, the strangest character in the novel and one of the most sympathetic. The Scholarly Attorney tells Jack that George used to be a circus performer, but he was forced to leave. Jack, typically, is curious to know more:
"What was his act?"
"He was the man who got hanged."
"Oh," I said, and looked at George. That accounted for the big neck, no doubt. Then, "Did the apparatus go wrong with him and choke him or something?"
"No," the Scholarly Attorney said, "the whole matter simply grew distasteful to him."
The situation is darkly funny. George's wife fell to her death in a trapeze performance, as the Scholarly Attorney reveals just before this passage. After this, George found he could not perform his act, since it "grew distasteful to him." This is an ironic situation: any normal person would find it distasteful to be regularly hanged in the first place, so it is ironic that George only begins to find his role distasteful once his wife dies. The Scholarly Attorney's use of the term "distaste" is also an ironic understatement. He goes on to describe that George's "distaste" included symptoms much stronger than would usually be attributed to the term, including "wetting the bed like a child" and complete paralysis.
Jack continually tries to call the Scholarly Attorney's attention to this irony. But the Scholarly Attorney describes George's condition solemnly, "ignoring my wit," as Jack says twice. Thus this shows the difference between the men who think themselves to be father and son. Jack, the writer, always looking for turns of phrase that please him, sees George as the butt of a joke, an entertaining curiosity only worthy to be the object of "wit." This contrasts with the Scholarly Attorney, who, in his late life, becomes somber, detached, and religious, and takes George very seriously, to the point of absurdity.
Related Themes:
