Literary Elements Worksheet 1
Frankenstein
Irony
Mary Shelley uses the literary technique of irony to contrast expectation and reality. Irony presents a discrepancy between what is said and what is really meant, between what would normally be expected and what actually happens, or between what the audience knows and what a character knows.
Verbal irony occurs when a character says one thing but really means something else.
Example: The Creature introduces himself to the elderly and blind De Lacey by saying, "I am a traveller in want of a little rest."
Explain how what the Creature says is different from what he really means.
Situations! irony occurs when there is a contrast between what is expected to happen, or what is appropriate to happen, and what really does happen.
Example: Although the De Lacey family is portrayed as valuing virtue and intelligence, they beat and repel the Creature, who possesses both of these qualities, simply because he is ugly.
Explain the contrast between what is expected or appropriate and what actually occurs.
Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something important that a character does not know.
Example: The old woman who nurses Frankenstein after he collapses upon seeing Clerval's corpse says, "If you mean about the gentleman you murdered, I believe that it were better for you if you were dead ..."
Explain the irony with information that readers know but the woman does not know.
FOLLOW-UP: Find another example in the novel of one of the three types of irony. Explain what
makes it ironic.
Example:
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