What do these phrases have in common? The Titanic promoting itself as unsinkable and a cop fining another cop for speeding. These are all examples of irony. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, and The Sniper by Liam O'Flaherty. These realistic fictional stories all use irony to convey a message. In The Gift of the Magi, a poor wife and husband sell their most important possession to buy Christmas gifts. In The Necklace, a woman wants to go to a party and loses a necklace she borrowed. She spends years trying to make up for it only to learn that it was a fake. In The Sniper, a soldier kills an enemy only to learn that it was his brother. Irony sends a message when it causes decisions to have effects greater than their cause.
The first short story uses irony when the two lovers want to buy a gift for each other. They do this because they care about each other. To do this they sell their most prized possessions. Their gifts are something that would make the possession they sold more useful. “And now they were hers, but her hair was gone. But she held
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This happens when a lady spends 10 years of her life in debt because of a lost diamond necklace. This is only to learn that the diamond necklace that stole her life was a cheap fake. The lady wants to be rich and go to fancy parties with necklaces. To do this she buys a dress and borrows a necklace which she loses. She and her husband spend 10 years buying a replacement. In the end she learns that the necklace was an imitation not the real thing which costed a 1000th of the price. "Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands. "Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the most five hundred francs!" " (pg 6) The message of this story is be careful with how much you want because too much will cause ill fortune. A fancy party costs a person 10 years of their life!!! This result is definitely much greater than the cause that caused