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Similes
Situational Irony
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:
