Funerals and Drunk Children; What More Could You Want?

Frank O'Connor's "The Drunkard" is aptly named, yet not in the way that the reader initially expects. In the beginning of the story, it seems obvious that the title refers to the speaker's father. As soon as the speaker mentions that "drink...was [his] Father's greatest weakness," (p 344), the audience assumes that the title refers to this weakness. Yet as the plot thickens, the audience is suddenly treated to a surprising reversal of meaning when the speaker himself becomes drunk from one glass of porter. This unexpected action causes the majority of the humor within the story to transpire, as the speaker suddenly begins to curse like a sailor and shouting at his father and a few older women. Yet perhaps the detail that causes the greatest feeling of irony and humor in this situation is that it is the father who, being sober, must escort his drunken son home. Just as his son often dealt with his drunken outbursts and tirades, so, too, must the father now handle his drunken son's antics.

In a way, O'Connor's title of "The Drunkard" refers to both father and son. Superficially, the title refers to the speaker, the actual drunkard in the story; yet the title still applies to the speaker's father, the customary drunkard and the man who, by brining his son into a bar and not paying attention to him, caused his son to become a drunkard as well.

Modern Sophocles

Well, Nadine Gordimer's "Once upon a Time" has a rather grisly ending, doesn't it? Unfortunately, you can almost see the ending coming. The narrator sets up her theme in the initial story by reflecting that it was the stress and paranoia that actually kept her awake at night, not any real threat. She was stuck in "an epicenter of stress" that entrapped her within a constant state of fear and paranoia of danger. The frame story which then follows this reflection is therefore told with an ubiquitous sense of dread and doom. As the man and woman continue to build up their defenses and safety measures in order to keep danger out and, more importantly, their paranoia away, you start to get a feeling that something disastrous will result anyway, either in spite of these precautions or maybe even because of these precautions. The audience can do nothing but read on as the couple continues to add on more and more security measures, while the boy innocently is "fascinated by the device[s]" and uses them to "play with his small friends."

When the final paragraph starts, and the audience reads as the boy pretends "to be the Prince who braves the terrible thicket of thorns," the sense of dread escalates. Almost before the reader reads of the boy's fate, he can predict what likely will happen. It is this final paragraph depicting the boy's death (or at least near-death) which connects the frame story to the initial exterior story by revealing the situational irony in the boy's mutilation. Like the narrator in her bed, the man and woman had become so stricken with fear and paranoia that they ended up causing severe pain and suffering to themselves in attempts to avoid that same pain and suffering. Like Oedipus trying to prevent a prophecy from coming true, the man and woman's actions are what cause the thing which they dread the most.

You and What Empire? (Question 13)

Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" is an excellently witty example of situational irony. The main source of this irony occurs in the juxtaposition of the image of Ozymandias' powerful proclamation of power and of the image of the of a ruined building or civilization. The irony is initially unclear, as the speaker begins by giving a description of the location of the ruins, which consist only of "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/ Stand[ing] in the desert" (2-3) and "a shattered visage" (4) of stone. We then start to learn of what kind of man Ozymandias really was, as his sculptor carved him with a "frown,/ and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command" (4-5). This image continues to form with the arrogant proclamation by Ozymandias that he is the "'king of kings;/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'" (10-11). These lines make it clear that Ozymandias was extremely arrogant, self-inclined, and obsessed with luxury.

Yet immediately after this, the speaker describes not a wonderful civilization, or even the remnants of a wonderful civilization, but the ruins of a civilization of "decay" where "nothing beside remains" (12). Instead of a grand and luxurious empire, all that remains are two pillars and a sculpted head. Ozymandias' selfish arrogance, like any man's arrogance, was all for naught. This irony proves that luxury and materials, like life, is fleeting.