Situational Irony

The Giver is set in a dystopian community where everything is done according to a strict set of rules. People rarely make mistakes or break the rules, and when they do, they are punished. It is particularly rare for the elders who run the community to break the rules. But, during the Ceremony of the Twelve, an annual ceremony during which twelve-year-olds are assigned jobs, the elders skip the main character Jonas. This confuses the reader, Jonas, and all of the characters, because it is not at all what anyone was expecting. Something happened that was completely different than what was expected, making this an example of situational irony.

In this story, the children Scout and Jem are scared of the neighborhood recluse, Boo Radley. They have heard negative gossip about Boo, and they are scared of the Radley house. In Chapter 6, Jem’s pants get stuck in the Radley’s fence, and he leaves them there. Later, Jem goes back to get them and finds them folded over the fence with stitches in them, suggesting that someone fixed them up for him. At this point in the story, the characters and the reader do not expect Radley to be kind and compassionate, making this a case of situational irony.

In this story, firemen are people who set books on fire. This is situational irony because readers expect firemen to be people who put out fires, not people who set them. By drawing this contrast between what the reader expects and what actually happens, the reader better understands the dystopian world the book is set in.

Harper Lee could have shown readers that Boo Radley is actually nice through narration or dialogue, but she used situational irony instead. The situational irony takes readers by surprise and prompts them to reflect on the complexity of Boo as a character.

Romeo and Juliet love each other, and this gives the audience hope that they will be able to be together by the end of the play. But, when Romeo sees Juliet under the influence of a potion that makes her appear dead, he kills himself. When Juliet wakes up and finds Romeo dead, she kills herself. This is a drastically different outcome than the "happily ever after" ending that you may hope to find in a romance, making Romeo and Juliet's love story a tragedy. Situational irony allows Shakespeare to portray the tragic, complex nature of love. This is also an example of dramatic irony because, unlike Romeo, the reader knows that Juliet is not really dead.

Recall the example above about the character who professes her love to her fiancé's brother. This situational irony makes for a shocking plot twist to make the reader want to find out what happens next.

The way Boo mended Jem’s pants in To Kill a Mockingbird shows readers that Boo is nicer than they expected. The shock that Boo is a kind person, unlike the dangerous, mean person that the townspeople think he is, makes readers reflect on the practice of judging people based on what they hear about them. Learning not to judge people is a critical lesson in the book. Situational irony helps to effectively convey this important message.

Recall the example of situational irony from Lois Lowry’s book, The Giver. Since everything seems to run so smoothly in Jonas’ community, the reader does not expect anything out of the ordinary to happen at the Ceremony of the Twelve. When it does, the reader is reminded that, no matter what you think about a situation, there is no guarantee that things will happen the way you expect them to go.