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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
Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Four Venerable Friends :
The story begins with an introduction of the principal cast of characters in language that implies social respectability and wisdom. But then the narrator undercuts this implication in an ironic twist:
THAT very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wycherly.
Dr. Heidegger's friends are introduced in terms that are quickly undermined by their actual behavior. They are, in the very first sentence of the story, Dr. Heidegger's "venerable friends," a term used both by the narrator and by Dr. Heidegger himself when referring to his assembled guests. To be "venerable" is to be granted respect, generally due to age, wisdom, or character. The reader is, at least briefly, led to imagine four respectable figures, wise with the knowledge and experience of many years. It is with great irony, then, that the narrator exposes the foolishness and vanity of these "three white-bearded gentleman" and the one "withered gentlewoman" assembled by Dr. Heidegger, who is of questionable character himself. The reader does not expect "venerable friends" of advanced age to behave with the downright immaturity that comes to define their behavior throughout the story.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Strange Deception :
Dr. Heidegger's elderly acquaintances are quite convinced of their transformation and behave like raucous young people, mocking the Dr. Heidegger's age, dancing, flirting with each other, and fighting. As all of this plays out, Hawthorne hints at a sense of dramatic irony by turning attention at one point to a mirror that suggests (with its reflection) that the four friends haven't actually become youthful—the mirror shows them as they were before they drank the water from the Fountain of Youth, and this creates some dramatic irony, as readers begin to sense that the transformation these people have undergone isn't as comprehensive as they'd like to think:
Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grandsires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam.
Hawthorne highlights the gap between the characters' perception of themselves as carefree adolescents and the reader's growing suspicion that the transformation is illusory. This is one of many small details in the story that seems to cast doubt upon (but never completely refutes) the supernatural qualities of Dr. Heidegger's elixir. From the perspective of the mirror, the scene looks quite different: four elderly people "ridiculously" imitating the conduct of the young. The narrator, with great irony, refers to the scene reflected in the mirror as a "strange deception," despite the heavy implication that it is precisely their feeling of youth that is deceptive.
Related Themes:
