5. Style
Irony
Irony
Irony occurs when words and meaning are at odds, or when expectations are contradicted. For instance, if we expect a psychopathic serial killer to be punished, yet she is rewarded, then the situation is ironic. In the title graphic above, we are told to “OBEY,” yet the people we are told to obey are not ones who we would generally obey, at least not in North America or Western Europe: Nixon, Mao, and Lenin. (The posters “Nixon Money,” Mao Money,” and “Lenin Money,” are by Shepard Fairey, 2003, and were photographed by RYC at a 2019 Vancouver showing).
Dramatic irony occurs when the expectation or understanding of a character (or group of characters) is contradicted by the expectation or understanding of the reader or audience.
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Swift on Guns
I suggest below various ways to do a structural analysis of an excerpt from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver Travels (1726). I then provide the beginning of an analysis of Swift’s use of irony, and suggest that you finish it.
Gulliver Travels is a fictional work in which the character Gulliver travels all over the world and discovers fabulous lands where people are gigantic, horses talk, etc. Behind the make-believe, however, are satiric depictions of European life. Gulliver often acts as an unwitting representative of everything Swift sees wrong with 18th Century English society.
In the following excerpt Gulliver is in a land where the people are gigantic (which partly explains why the king likens humans to insects at the end of the passage). Gulliver is trying to impress the king with European technology and ingenuity. He assumes that the king will be as excited as he is by the application of science to warfare. Even at the end of the passage he assumes that the king’s objections to guns and canons come from “a certain narrowness of thinking” and from an “unnecessary scruple.” While the narrator (Gulliver) is telling us one thing, what is the author (Swift) telling us? What does this difference between narrator and author suggest about the rhetorical strategy? Please note that I’ve simplified and modernized the original text.
Text
Great allowances should be given to a king, who lives wholly secluded from the rest of the world, and must therefore be unacquainted with the manners and customs that most prevail in other nations. The want of which knowledge will ever produce many prejudices, and a certain narrowness of thinking, from which England and the politer countries of Europe are wholly exempted. It would be hard, indeed, if so remote a prince's notions of virtue and vice were to be offered as a standard for all mankind.
To confirm what I have now said, and further to show the miserable effects of a confined education, I shall here insert a passage which will be hard to believe. In hopes to gain his majesty's favour, I told him of an invention, discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. I told him that a proper quantity of this powder rammed into a hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead, with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force. And that the largest balls thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of an army at once, but batter the strongest walls to the ground, sink down ships, with a thousand men in each, to the bottom of the sea. When linked together by a chain, these cannonballs would cut through masts and rigging, divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all waste before them. We often put this powder into large hollow balls of iron, and discharged them by an engine into some city we were besieging, which would rip up the pavements, tear the houses to pieces, burst and throw splinters on every side, dashing out the brains of all who came near. I told him that I knew the ingredients very well, that they were cheap and common, and that I understood the manner of compounding them. I could direct his workmen how to make those tubes, of a size proportional to all other things in his majesty's kingdom, and the largest need not be above a hundred feet long. Twenty or thirty of these tubes, charged with the proper quantity of powder and balls, would batter down the walls of the strongest town in his dominions in a few hours, or destroy the whole metropolis, if ever it should pretend to dispute his absolute commands. [...]
The king was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. He was amazed that I could entertain such inhuman ideas, and in so familiar a manner, as to appear wholly unmoved at all by the scenes of blood and desolation which I had painted as the common effects of those destructive machines. He said, “some evil genius, enemy to mankind, must have been the first contriver.” As for himself, he protested, that although few things delighted him so much as new discoveries in art or in nature, yet he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret, which he commanded me, as I valued any life, never to mention any more.
A strange effect of narrow principles and views! that a prince— possessed of every quality which procures veneration, love, and esteem, of strong parts, great wisdom, and profound learning, endowed with admirable talents, and almost adored by his subjects—should, from a nice, unnecessary scruple, whereof in Europe we can have no conception, let slip an opportunity put into his hands that would have made him absolute master of the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of his people!
Analysis: Practice #1
One way to start a structural analysis is to locate separate writing strategies and then figure out how they come together to make a point. Using a colour-code system, highlight the following strategies — in the uncoloured text above.
Satire (or attack) directed against England and Europe — in blue
Logos, Process analysis: the making of explosives — in green
Description: violence of explosives; violence (and evil?) of human nature — in red
Construct an outline of an argument about Swift’s writing strategy, and then use your outline to write an essay.
I suggest doing this exercize first — with the uncoloured text above — and then looking at the colour-coded text below.
Practice # 2
Another way to do a rhetorical analysis is to focus on one strategy and then show how it works in several stages or in its different aspects. This way is often preferable, since you’ll have a unified essay from the start, and you won’t have to struggle so hard to combine the different aspects.
For instance, in the colour-coded text above, you may have noticed that the excerpt starts and finishes with the colour blue, the one that highlights Swift’s satire, his attack on European feelings of superiority. You may also have noticed that this sense of superiority was contradicted in many ways by the violent use to which Europeans put their technology, and by the glee Gulliver displays in describing death and destruction. You could write an essay that focuses on the way Gulliver’s view of things is attacked by Swift. You could focus on the fundamental irony in the text: on the surface, the words of Gulliver say one thing, yet underneath his words Swift is saying something completely different.
Try to analyze the text in terms of irony, that is, in terms of the difference between what Gulliver is saying and what Swift is saying.
Below are the beginnings of a sample outline and a sample essay on Swift’s irony. How could you finish this essay? How could you return to the opening scenario in your conclusion? Try to write your own essay before looking at the samples below.
Partial Outline & Essay
Aren’t Guns Wonderful?
While Gulliver’s uses graphic descriptions and displays great pride in European ingenuity, Swift uses satire to attack everything Gulliver says.
Gulliver’s description of the history of gunpowder is so violent and enthusiastic that the reader cannot help but question Gulliver’s point of view.
— discovery of gun powder
— immediate application of discovery to violent ends: blowing things up, killing people; horrific wide-scale applications: ranks, ships, towns, “dashing out brains”
— narrator’s excitement is so at odds with the horror he is describing that the reader concludes Swift is using irony
— leads to questions about what Swift is really saying
The narrator’s excited generalizations about the narrow perspective of the king become the author’s criticism of a narrow, brutal mode of thinking.
— in first paragraph we imagine narrator could be right about king, but by last paragraphs — i.e. after the history of guns paragraph (above)—we invert what narrator says — narrator’s condescension turns on narrator
— we start to see him as evil?
— narrator’s excitement and his model of civilization turns into a dire warning - about civilization and - about liking violence
Aren’t Guns Wonderful?
Imagine you are a ninety years old: you’ve lived through World War II and The Cold War, only to reach “The War on Terror.” You ask yourself: are humans destined to keep on killing each other? Where did we get this idea of using technology to put each other in the grave? The Eighteenth Century writer Jonathan Swift asked these same questions, long before fighter planes and laser-guided weapons. Looking back at his writing now, it seems he grasped a basic point about human nature: as soon as we see a way of using technology to control situations aggressively, we don’t hesitate to use that technology. Swift’s writing is not straightforward, however, in that he delivers his criticism ironically, that is, through the mouth of an overly enthusiastic character, Gulliver, who is also the narrator. While Gulliver’s uses graphic descriptions and displays great pride in European ingenuity, Swift uses satire to attack everything Gulliver says.
Gulliver’s description of the history of gunpowder is so violent and enthusiastic that the reader cannot help but question Gulliver’s point of view. In paragraph two Gulliver gives a brief history of the development and initial use of guns, telling us that “between three and four hundred years ago” explosive powder was discovered, and that immediately it was applied to guns. The description is striking, in that it goes from a very detached, scientific observation on the origins of gunpowder to increasingly violent applications of its use. We go from “a certain powder” and “a proper quantity,” to “powder rammed,” “all fly up together,” “destroy whole ranks” and “divide hundreds of bodies in the middle, and lay all [to] waste.” Gulliver’s excitement is suspect, for who would get excited about such killing and maiming? And why is no one asking basic questions, such as, Why is the discovery so immediately applied to warfare? Swift is saying a great deal by not saying anything at all, that is, by letting Gulliver do all the talking.
Gulliver’s excited generalizations about the narrow perspective of the king become Swift’s criticism of a narrow, brutal mode of thinking.
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You could stop your essay here, or you may want to add a paragraph about the irony Swift uses to comment on the difference between good government and tyrannical government. While Gulliver sees himself and Europe as superior, his view of a king’s role is opposed to human rights, decency, and good government.
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Next: Six Categories in Black Robe (1985 novel)