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Dramatic Irony
Chapter 8: Selling the General
Explanation and Analysis—The Oil Trays:
Chapter 8 features an important passage of visual imagery during a flashback to the fated party that ruined Dolly's career.
Halfway through Chapter 8, the circumstances around Dolly's fall from grace in the circle of New York City socialites become known to the reader. A flashback to the day of the party sets the scene: two years earlier, Dolly hoped to make cultural history by hosting a lavish party attended by all the prominent figures of New York City. Her centerpiece was an array of illuminated oil and water trays suspended above her guests; these decorations, however, cause a freak accident during the party in a moment that destroys Dolly's reputation:
From there, [Dolly] was the first to notice, as midnight approached, that something was awry with the translucent trays that held the water and oil: they were sagging a little—were they? They were slumping like sacks from their chains and melting, in other words. And then they began to collapse, flop and drape and fall away, sending scalding oil onto the heads of every glamorous person in the country and some other countries, too [...] her guests shrieked and staggered and covered their heads, tore hot, soaked garments from their flesh and crawled over the floor like people in medieval altar paintings whose earthly luxuries have consigned them to hell.
Visual imagery in this passage presents in great detail the tragedy of Dolly's oil trays. Dolly, aghast and frozen in terror, witnesses the decorations collapse onto her guests. The moment plays out in a series of visual descriptions capturing the sight of the oil trays as they falter, then give way. Through these images, readers receive an account of the event as if it were unfolding before their eyes. Carefully detailed and elaborate imagery throughout this passage allow readers to participate alongside Dolly in "frozen disbelief" as witnesses to the event.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Dolly's Transformation:
In Chapter 8, the impact of Dolly's ill-fated party on her image and reputation among the New York City socialites is described through multiple hyperboles.
Midway through the chapter, a flashback to the events two years earlier that damaged Dolly's career lays out the bleak aftermath. A description of the fallout from the oil-tray collapse uncovers Dolly's own psyche:
Even before she'd served her six months for criminal negligence, before the class-action suit that resulted in her entire net worth (never nearly as large as it has seemed) being distributed in small parcels to her victims, La Doll was gone. Wiped out. She emerged from jail thirty pounds heavier and fifty years older with wild gray hair. No one recognized her, and the world where she'd thrived had shortly proceeded to vaporize—now even the rich believed they were poor.
Exaggeration and unrealistic descriptions fill this passage: Dolly only served six months in prison yet aged fifty years; the old world vaporized in a matter of months; and all rich people genuinely believed they were poor. Hyperbole serves the purpose here of showing how greatly the ordeal changed Dolly rather than relating a strictly accurate account of events. Six months made Dolly utterly and irreversible transformed.
Furthermore, Dolly continues to attribute her miscalculation of the party to a societal shift, rather than personal fault. Her belief that she has held onto a widely different and unrecognizable past is again described in hyperbolic terms—six months have little power to entirely undo a society. Hyperbole in this passage captures the strength of Dolly's feelings toward the incident, rather than the plain truth of it.
Related Themes:
