Situational Irony In The Necklace And The Ransom Of Red Chief

Situational irony occurs when the final outcome of a story is contradictory to what is expected. Authors often use situational irony to target the emotions of their reader. O. Henry the author of “The Ransom of Red Chief” and Guy de Maupassant the author of “The Necklace” use situational irony to affect different emotions of their readers. O. Henry uses it to target the reader’s humorous side. Whereas Guy de Maupassant uses it to target the reader’s sympathetic side. By examining “The Ransom of Red Chief” and “The Necklace” it is clear that the authors use situational irony to target the emotions of the reader. In “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry, Henry uses situational irony to produce a humorous feeling. For example, instead of Johnny feeling like he is kidnapped, he likes to be in the woods with his captors. He plays games of

For instance, when Mathilde replaces the necklace she goes from the middle class to the poorest of the poor. Instead of being the richest as she had always desired, “Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of abject poverty” (7). Mathilde feels that she should have the finest gown and jewels of anyone, but she is only made poorer when her dream comes true for a night. She lost her beauty and her youth as result of her losing a necklace. Another example of situational irony in “The Necklace” is when Mathilde finds out the necklace she had borrowed was fake. All of the years she has spent being critically poor are for nothing. When Mathilde finally tells Madame Forestier what really happened to her necklace, she says “Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs” (8)! Madame Loisel realized then that all of the years she had spent in abject poverty were in vain. The author, Guy de Maupassant, used situational irony to make the reader feel sympathetic for