Irony In 'Lamb To The Slaughter'

Irony Essay

Irony is one of the most commonly used speech devices with everyone using it and sometimes a person doesn’t even know it. Irony is when a person says/does one thing but they mean the opposite. There are 3 main types of irony used in speech and stories, those being, verbal irony, situational irony, and dramatic irony. All 3 types of irony are used often but situational irony and verbal irony have been used significantly more since they could be used in more places than dramatic irony. The definitions of the 3 types are that verbal irony is when a person says something but means the opposite while situational irony is when a person expects one thing but they get the opposite and then dramatic irony is when the audience knows

With situational irony we have the loving wife Mary who wouldn’t harm anyone flat out kill her husband. The narrator “At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.” (Dahl 135-138). The irony is that Mary, who should be the understanding loving wife, kills her husband. You would never expect her to kill him as you would expect her to take it and let him leave. WIth verbal irony the cops that investigate the crime scene let Mary convince them to eat the lamb. The policemen “She wants us to finish it. She said so. Be doing her a favor.” (Dahl 355). The irony is that they don’t know that the lamb was used to kill Mary’s husband Patrick. They think that she just wants them to have supper but in reality she wants them to destroy the murder weapon. To be clear in Roald Dahl’s “Lamb To The Slaughter,” he uses situational irony and verbal irony to advance the plot of the short story. He has Mary, the caring non-violent wife, kill her husband in a brutal fashion and have the cops say that they would do her a favor by eating the lamb because they think that she wants them to have supper when she needs them to get rid of the murder

With situational irony we have our protagonist tear up his bed because he thinks that a prank is waiting for him in it. He states that “I caught hold of the side of the mattress gingerly, and very slowly drew it toward me. It came away, followed by the sheet and the rest of the bedclothes” (Maupassant 12). The jokes on himself because there was NO prank so he caused his own problem by taking his bed apart. Then for the verbal irony we have Billy Bob III say that there might be a prank on him. Billy Bob III says to himself “Look out, old ferret! They have something in store for you.” (Maupassant 4). This is an example of verbal irony because a person can interpret his words as him calling himself an old ferret when he is a 50ish year old human male. Another person could interpret his words as that he thinks something is in store for him but nothing ever comes leading to his paranoia worsening. In the end Guy de Maupassant’s short story “An Uncomfortable Bed” uses irony to set up the ironic end of the story with our main character Billy Bob III throwing his bed sheets in front of the door which causes his own prank on