A Dramatic Irony Download
Angeles Bartholomew
Dramatic irony is a relationship of contrast between acharacter's limited understanding of his or her situation in someparticular moment of the unfolding action and what the audience,at the same instant, understands the character's situationactually to be.
It is thus the result of a special sort of discrepancy in perspective, and hence is "moment-bound." There is on the one hand how things appear from a point of view that emerges within the action at a given moment, and which is constrained by the limitations of an individual's history up to that moment. (In fiction, this will be the picture held by some character -- say, the protagonist of a drama.) There is on the other hand a synoptic point of view that takes in the whole of an interpersonal history, part of which is unknown to that individual at the particular moment in question. For dramatic irony to emerge, some consciousness (in fiction, this will be the audience's) must be simultaneously aware of both perspectives.
But some of the most famous and powerful uses of dramaticirony are associated with tragedy, where it serves to emphasizehow limited human understanding can be even when it is mostplausible, and how painful can be the costs of themisunderstandings, in some sense inevitable, that result.
A classic instance of dramatic irony thatinvolves no hypocrisy takes place in the scene in which Oedipusreproaches his brother-in-law Creon, whom he mistakenly butplausibly believes to have conspired to bring him under suspicionof having killed the former king of Thebes in order to have himexpelled from the city so as to be able to take over the kingshipin his stead. He tells Creon that a man is a fool if hethinks that he can sin against his kinfolk and escape the wrathof the gods. We note that the warning is phrased as auniversal: it applies to any person. Oedipus isunaware that he himself has slain his own father (the very sameking, no less) and committed incest with hismother. The audience, however, in the moment it hearsOedipus make this declaration, knows (1) the facts about Oedipus'parricide and incest, (2) the fact that Oedipus is unaware ofthese, (3) the fact that these transgressions will eventually berevealed before all Thebes, (4) the fact that Oedipus will sufferterribly at this revelation, and (4) the fact that the divineorder (in virtue of the various prophecies and circumstances oftheir fulfillment) is firmly implicated both in the commissionand the discovery (hence "punishment") of thesecrimes. It is this discrepancy between what Oedipusunderstands his words to apply to and what the audienceunderstands their scope actually to be that constitutes theeffect the dramatic irony.
A classic instance ofdramatic irony that definitely does involve unconscioushypocrisy is what Torvald Helmer unwittingly reveals about hischaracter in the climactic scene of A Doll's House, inhis reaction to Krogstad's first letter, informing him that hiswife Nora has forged a promissory note in her (now dead) father'sname in order to provide collateral for a loan. There arein fact several respects in which he shows himself to be anunconscious hypocrite.
Fat lot of good it does us though. When dramatic irony crops up, it's usually not to let us feel smugly superior; instead it's to toy with our fragile little emotions. If we're lucky, the emotion being manipulated will be amusement. In serious situations, dramatic irony will be present to make us squirm and bite our fingernails in anxiety, since we can see the danger coming but cannot communicate this knowledge to the characters in order to save them.
A character's Hidden Depths are often a source of Dramatic Irony. Gave Up Too Soon can also often overlap, in cases where the audience knows how close the character is to success before they give up. A favorite trick of time-travel or historical works; see It Will Never Catch On. Foregone Conclusion or Doomed by Canon often result in this. May end with an Internal Reveal. The opposite is Tomato Surprise, when the characters know something that the audience doesn't know. Innocent Inaccurate is a sub-trope. Died in Ignorance can cause a death to become dramatically ironic
Compare Dramatically Missing the Point. Contrast "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot, where the drama come from them catching on to the Dramatic Irony too late. This trope is not "general irony, Played for Drama".
Music
- Eminem's "Stan" is made of this.
- Throughout the song, Stan grows increasingly unstable and angry with Eminem for not responding to his letters, and becomes more and more convinced Eminem is intentionally ignoring him. The listener probably figures that a musician as popular and well known as Eminem likely receives far too much fan mail to be able to respond to any of it quickly, Stan was probably just unlucky enough to get lost in the shuffle, and is too unstable to realize it. The music video takes this a step further by showing that Stan's suggestion in the first verse that "there probably was a problem at the post office or somethin'" is actually true.
- The last verse completes it. Unlike the first three verses, which were addressed from Stan to Eminem, the last verse is Eminem's response to the letter in the second verse. He sees how unstable Stan is and says that he hopes the letter gets to him before it's too late and Stan ends up like the guy he saw on the news that killed himself and his pregnant girlfriend by driving them off a bridge. It's only at the very end of the verse that Eminem pieces together that it is too late and the guy on the news was Stan.
- On top of all that, the third verse is a drunken, angry audio recording of Stan's Motive Rant while he's on his way to commit the murder-suicide about how Eminem supposedly ignored his letters, which even he seems to realize were cries for help at that point, and left Stan to get worse, even though, again, Eminem likely just hadn't read the letters yet. Stan realizes just seconds too late that if he kills himself this way, the tape he's recording his last desperate and angry thoughts on will probably be destroyed in the water and Eminem will never hear it anyway.
- The Looking Glass' song "Brandy" has dramatic irony in the first chorus, where the title character of the song, a young waitress working at a port-side bar, is told by the sailors she's taking drink orders from that "your eyes could steal a sailor from the sea". The rest of the song is all about a sailor she fell in love with, and her failure to get him to stay with her over returning to sea.
- Songdrops:
- In "Striper the Kitty", the singer thinks he has a pet cat, when we know that Striper is really a skunk.
- In "Little Joe", the singer thinks someone stole Joe, his pet caterpillar, and then later replaced him with a butterfly.
Web Animation
- Everything Is Broken: In part 13 Rainbow Dash sees Scootaloo talking with RF Rainbow Dash, she does not understand what is happening but if the viewer have read Rainbow Factory, then it is obvious.
- Helluva Boss: The season 2 premier "The Circus" begins with an extended flashback sequence of Stolas and Blitzo's childhoods. Despite their circumstances, both kids are hopeful about their futures at the end of the segment, while the audience is aware of how complicated and tragic both their lives become later on.
- Red vs. Blue: In season 15 episode 13, Carolina says to the Director, "With all due respect, I doubt I'll ever be fighting a war alongside Red and Blue idiots, sir." Of course, since this is a flashback episode, the audience knows that that is exactly what she will end up doing in the future.
- RWBY:
- Weiss repeatedly rejects Jaune's clumsy advances, dismissing him as just another boy who only cares about her inheritance. However, Jaune confides secretly to his team-mates all the positive qualities, such as her intelligence and singing voice, that make her the most incredible girl he's ever met; he doesn't understand why she doesn't think he's being sincere. Pyrrha tells him that he needs to state his feelings honestly instead of engaging in melodramatic gimmicks, such as serenading her with a guitar. At the same time, he doesn't know how Pyrrha feels about him because she's repressing it; he incorrectly thinks her celebrity and talent will have men queuing up to date her; after hearing her advice to Jaune about Weiss, Nora tells Pyrrha to practice what she preaches.
- Throughout Volume 5, the protagonists in Haven view Leo as their most reliable ally, despite the fact he's dragging his feet over providing Huntsmen to go after the Spring Maiden. Although the viewers have been told why, the heroes don't find out until it's too late. At the end of the previous volume, it turns out Leo is the "informant" who's helping Salem against Ozpin, with Volume 5's "Dread in the Air" confirming he's The Mole due to cowardice. The teenage heroes never suspect Leo until it's too late; while Ozpin and Qrow have suspicions about Leo because he's not following Ozpin's contingency orders, they never share the full extent of their suspicions with the kids. Thus, the heroes walk into an ambush the viewers know has been set up and which even Ozpin and Qrow aren't fully prepared for.
- In the Atlas Arc, both Blake and Yang's affection for each other and Ruby's deteriorating mental health are teased to the audience; at the same time, characters increasingly notice Blake and Yang's behaviour while becoming increasingly divorced from Ruby's. The characters therefore act as an Audience Surrogate for Blake and Yang while knowing less than the audience about Ruby. The audience is left unsurprised by both Blake and Yang's Big Damn Kiss and Ruby's mental breakdown in Volume 9, but the characters lampshade how long they've waited for Bumblebee and how caught off-guard they are by the scale of Ruby's mental health crisis. This is an Enforced example because the writers confirmed using the characters as an Audience Surrogate for the long awaited Blake/Yang romance while deliberately distracting them from being allowed to investigate Ruby too closely; the audience being far more aware of Ruby's state of mind than her companions contributes to Ruby's breakdown.
- The Twins (2022): This is what drives the horror at the end of the short. We the audience know that Lucas is dead and the Lucas we see is really Lake, who's decided to take over Lucas's life. No one else realizes and the class laughs when "Lucas" says "Lake" just must be late for class again. The Missing Child poster for Lake at the end emphasizes this even more.