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Theme Of Irony In Edgar Allan Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe is an author who greatly influenced hundreds and thousands during the mid 19th century and still today, with his famous works such as The Tell-Tale Heart, Annabel Lee, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven, and The Cask of Amontillado. All written by himself and his inventive mind, Poe has been providing readers and fans with horrific and dismal writing like no other author. His stories and poems all expressing his writing style with the descriptive imagery, ironic situations, and symbolism that portray themes of death, love, and revenge along with insanity and an endless, chilling suspense that is like no other. Poe utilizes descriptive imagery and has his symbolism help express separate meanings. He often uses suspense …show more content…

For instance, Poe uses different types of irony in the short story The Tell-Tale Heart to build suspense and tension, making the reader wonder whether the character will kill the old man or get caught. “I loved this old man… I think it was his eye...I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” (paragraph 2) This is an example of verbal irony. The author also writes,“What’s that noise, make it stop.” (paragraph 16). This example portrays situational irony, for when the narrator's guilt gets to the narrator, it is leading up to suspense and the confession of the murder. Poe uses this to help express the true feelings and intentions of the narrator when he talks about killing the old man and has the old man's heart drive him to confession. Poe also uses different types of irony which helps plays a very important role in The Cask of Amontillado as well. "I had told them that I should not return until the morning and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance , one and all, as soon as my back was turned." (line 24) These instructions from Montersor to his servants demonstrated his mastery of human psychology, Montresor knew they were not going to stay and it was all apart of his plan, which brings the irony into play. All of

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Edgar Allen Poe uses irony to tell the reader that the foe of the narrator, Fortunato, is going to die but he doesn’t know it. One example of irony is when Fortunato says, “‘the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough’”(Poe, 36). This is an example of situational irony because Fortunato doesn’t know, but when he said that the cough will not kill him, it might lead him to his death when the catacombs he will be sealed in will make his cough deadly. This use of situational irony conveys the theme because even from one insult from Fortunato drove the narrator to take revenge by killing him and he has a dark perspective of how he is going to end Fortunato’s life by making him suffer.

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