Sherman Alexie's 'Use Of Situational Irony'

Various Ironic Situations

A police officer wins an award for being the best in the town. He goes out with friends to celebrate. Later that night the officer gets into a car crash. Afterwards it is found that his blood alcohol level was .11. This means that he was suffering from severely impaired motor coordination, blurred vision, slurred speech, and delayed reaction time. This is an example of situational irony because what really happens is the opposite of what is expected. Situational irony is easily found in everyday life from little family arguments to loss of life. It is also found in the three short stories “Because My Father Always Said He Was The Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ At Woodstock” by Sherman

The illustration of irony is first shown in the father and mother relationship. The reader would expect a divorced couple to stay away from each other. However this is not the case. “And even though my mother didn’t want to be married to him anymore and his wreck didn’t change her mind about that, she still came to see him every day” (Alexie 9). This shows they still love and care about each other, yet they cannot live together. Another example of irony is found in the father and Jimi Hendrix relationship. People would expect someone who lived as an alcoholic and drug addict and died from vomiting to not be perceived as a hero by anybody. The father, however, idolizes Jimi

First off situational irony is related with the grandmother saying, “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that alose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (O’Connor 1). This leads the reader to expect that the family will not go on vacation to an area with a murderer in it. However, the grandmother ends up leading the family down a random gravel road and right into the Misfit. This is ironic because the grandmother had no intension of running into the Misfit and leading her family and herself to their deaths yet it happens anyway. Yet another example involving the grandmother is how she chooses to dress for the vacation. She wears a beautiful dress and a fancy hat all done up with lace because “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O’Connor 2). This is ironic because the reader does not expect a nice dressed lady to end up brutally murdered, with three gunshots to the chest, like she was. Both of this instances show irony in one specific character, just as the instances in Garbriel Garcia Marquez’s story