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Situational irony is when what is expected to happen is different from what actually happens. Verbal irony is sarcasm, while dramatic irony is when a character’s actions have the opposite effect. Examples from Greek legends and Shakespeare are given, and when situational irony leads to appropriate punishment, it is called poetic justice. Instantaneous karma is when an action has immediate ironic consequences.
Situational irony is the application of irony to an event or series of events in real life or fiction. It is sometimes called cosmic irony or irony of fate. Irony, a poorly understood term, refers to a disparity between what is expected to happen and what actually happens. Verbal irony, which subverts the meaning of a word or phrase through the use of tone or context, is better known as sarcasm. Dramatic irony is a narrative device whereby a character’s actions have the opposite effect than intended; this is what most people mean when they refer to situational irony.
The concept of irony was well known to the ancient Greeks, and Greek legends provide some of the earliest examples of situational irony. One legend involves the hero Perseus, grandson of Acrisius, who was king of the Greek kingdom of Argos. A seer predicted that Acrisius would be killed by his nephew, so Acrisius did everything he could to avoid this fate, including imprisonment and banishing his daughter. The exiled Perseus became a hero of legend and returned to his grandfather’s kingdom for a sporting event, where he accidentally killed Acrisius with a badly thrown discus. As with many such accounts, the person’s attempt to avoid the foretold fate instead ensured it would occur.
The classic example of situational irony involves the Greek hero Oedipus, who was warned by a seer that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Seeking to avoid this fate, Oedipus fled to a new kingdom, where he killed his king after a quarrel and later married the queen. Only later did he learn that he was adopted and that the king and queen were his natural parents. This legend inspired Sophocles to write Oedipus Rex, the famous Greek tragedy. For the Greeks, who believed that a person’s fate was predetermined by goddesses called Fates, trying to avoid one’s fate was a kind of sin.
To qualify as situational irony, the event should be preceded by actions designed to create the opposite effect. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is another classic example; by feigning her own death, Giulietta accidentally causes the tragic events of the end of the opera. A real-life example was the 1981 assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan. The shooter’s bullets missed the president. One bullet, however, ricocheted off the flak limousine that was supposed to protect him, and it was this bullet that wounded Reagan.
When situational irony leads to the accidental but appropriate punishment of a deserving person, it is called poetic justice. An example would be a thief being mugged. If the thief is mugged on his way home from a robbery, that would be an example of instantaneous karma. This is when an action has immediate ironic consequences; the term comes from a famous 1970 song by former Beatle John Lennon. Karma is a concept in Hindu spirituality which holds that a person will experience the consequences of his good and bad deeds, also summed up in the English expression “what happens around”.
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