?A young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout? (Swift).

Jonathan Swift?s essay, A Modest Proposal is a terrific example of the use of irony and satire to push an issue further by using irony than it can be when looked at from a more serious point of view. In A Modest Proposal he proposes to pay beggar mothers for their children when the children are a year old in order to provide food for the growing population and in order to control this rampant plague of population growth. Many authors have been using irony as a staple in their writing simply because irony is a more effective tool than seriousness. The tension between appearance and reality, between expectation and outcome; this is the heart of the ironic paper. Irony is divided into three branches, each defining a different element. Dramatic, situational and verbal ironies are each used to define distinct situations. Irony can add entertainment, humor and drama to a story that would otherwise be bland. Irony can

Dramatic irony, the discrepancy between character beliefs and reader knowledge, is often found mixed with elements of horror as it adds suspense to a work. In Edgar Allan Poe?s The Cask of Amontillado, as Fortunato states, ?The cough is a mere nothing, it will not kill me, I shall not die of a cough,? we know that he in fact will die from the dampness in the tombs. It is ironic that Fortunato was the one who suggested they go into the catacombs, to his death and he is asked 8 times to return before he is entombed. Mrs. Mallard of Kate Chopin?s The Story of an Hour ?breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long,? just minutes before dying. This is ironic to the story in retrospect because Mrs. Mallard feels freedom at the news of the death of her husband and dies at the realization of his survival. Perhaps most gruesome of all, in William Faulkner?s A Rose for Emily, the narrator says that ?Now and the we would see her in one of the downstairs windows ? she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house?.? We have by this time guessed that she has her lover?s corpse locked in a room on the top floor, but the narrator and other characters do not. Dramatic irony is often used by such people as Alfred Hitchcock and Wes Craven to enhance the suspense of their films.

Verbal irony is often the most commonly used and most commonly known of the three branches of irony. Verbal ironies, puns, are often used to rouse the readers thoughts. Verbal irony was used throughout The Cask of Amontillado. For example, the cure used for the dampness of the catacombs is called ?De Grave,? literally meaning of the grave. Verbal irony is also used at the end with a double entendre in repetition. Fortunato screams ?FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR,? at the horror of being buried alive. Montresor then replies, ?Yes. For the love of God,? revealing his motive for murder as a religious crusade against the Ma

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Approximate Word count = 1339
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)