Examples Of Irony In The Story Of An Hour

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Marriage is just what people do. They find a nice suitable mate and they get the government involved to make it official and contractual. Love doesn 't really exist unless it 's on paper, right? Many people jump into marrying someone simply because they like the idea of marriage at the time or because it is the socially acceptable thing to do be doing and not because they actually want a life-long commitment. For this reason, many marriages fail or one of the spouses ends up being terminally miserable as in The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. Social pressure, especially at the time this story took place, to get married is quite high because no one wants to end up like the crazy cat lady that never settled down. Effective uses of irony in …show more content…

Irony can be very effective in storytelling if used well. The irony in literature is typically when an aspect of the story turns out differently than anticipated. In The Story of an Hour, the irony is thick. In the beginning, it mentions that Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition so her sister and husband 's friend tried to break the news of her husband 's death to her gently. This is ironic because the news of Brently 's death does not upset Louise but causes extreme elation. She is overjoyed that she is free from her prison called marriage. They are afraid to break the news to her in fear it will cause her grief or heart problems, but that is not an issue until her husband turns out to be alive. Kate Chopin 's writing style is very interesting. The first and last paragraphs are extremely effective and really accentuate the heavy usage of irony. The story begins by stating that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart condition so her sister took great care to break the news of her husband 's death as tenderly as she could. This paragraph ties into the ending sentence, "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease- of joy that kills." The thing her sister was afraid of happening did occur, but not for the reasons she had

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