Irony In Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man

“I’m being ironic. Don’t interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it’s not polite…”

- Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles. Irony is a crucial part of humor, suspense, and writing in general.Ray Bradbury valued irony in his writing, he used irony consistently in his stories and even wrote about irony. Bradbury uses irony in all of his stories in The Illustrated Man. However, the three stories that most clearly show this irony are “The Long Rain”, “Marionettes Inc.” and “Zero Hour”. Bradbury uses irony in multiple ways to impact his stories. “The Long Rain” uses irony to create a plot twist and a sense of suspense. When the men find the first Sun Dome, the audience is relieved. This is until the men discover that this particular Sun Dome has been ruined by the electrical storms. “The Sun Dome was empty and dark” (87). This adds suspense because the audience doesn’t know if they will ever find a Sun Dome a Sun Dome or if they will die in the rain. The plot twist occurs because the audience assumes they will make it out of the rain when they reach the first Sun Dome, but they do not. Although, “The Long Rain” is not the only story in Bradbury’s collection that uses irony to create a plot twist. “Marionettes Inc.” uses this same

The whole story is ironic. “Zero Hour” is of course about children across the globe playing a game, which leads to the martian invasion of Earth. The story is inherently ironic. This is because it is unexpected that children playing a seemingly harmless game, could lead to all of the destruction that it did. Mink’s line at the end of the story, “‘Peekaboo! Said Mink” (266) especially highlights the irony because, like all of the children in the story, Mink does not fully understand the situation. As far as Mink is concerned, she is just playing a game, like Peekaboo, but in reality, she is causing mass