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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—“Interested” Soldiers:
The narrator describes his (and other soldiers’) experience of showing up to the hospital for rehabilitation therapy with verbal irony, as seen in the following passage:
Beyond the old hospital were the new brick pavilions, and there we met every afternoon and were all very polite and interested in what was the matter and sat in the machines that were to make so much difference.
Here, the narrator uses sarcasm when he describes how he and the other soldiers acted “very polite and interested in what was the matter” when arriving for their physical therapy sessions. As the narrator goes on to demonstrate throughout the story, these soldiers are so psychologically wounded from the war that they are not earnestly "interested" in anything (even healing their wounds). In fact, the narrator goes on to describe himself and his fellow soldiers as "detached" as a result of the trauma they experienced.
The narrator’s description of sitting “in the machines that were to make so much difference” also contains verbal irony. Readers come to learn just how ironic this statement is over the course of the story, as the narrator describes the inefficiency of these newly constructed rehabilitation machines and shows how they do not help a single character. The bitter and ironic way the narrator speaks about his experience in the Milan hospital communicates his awareness of how much the war has taken from him and his fellow soldiers and how little hope he has about being able to heal from the physical and psychological wounds of war.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Motivational Photographs:
The final scene of the story—in which the doctor hangs motivational photos of healed injuries next to the hospital’s rehabilitation machines—contains a few layers of situational irony, as seen in the following passage:
When [the major] came back, there were large framed photographs around the wall, of all sorts of wounds before and after they had been cured by the machines. In front of the machine the major used were three photographs of hands like his that were completely restored. I do not know where the doctor got them. I always understood we were the first to use the machines. The photographs did not make much difference to the major because he only looked out of the window.
This moment is an example of situational irony because these two wounded soldiers, who desperately need someone to support them in accepting the losses they’ve endured (such as the major’s wife’s recent death and the war injuries affecting both soldiers' limbs) are, instead, forced to stare at falsified motivational photos of soldiers who have overcome their wounds. The ironic tension here hints at how little psychological and emotional support wounded soldiers had during World War I.
A second layer of irony in this scene is the fact that, after the doctor goes to the trouble of framing and hanging all of these photographs in front of the major’s machine, the major doesn’t even look at them. This, again, suggests how unhelpful the medical establishment was in tending to the actual needs of soldiers at the time.
Related Themes:
