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Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Chapter 23
Explanation and Analysis—Now It Can Be Told:
In Chapter 23, Dwayne reads Kilgore Trout's novel Now It Can Be Told and takes it as fact rather than fiction. The scene in which he avidly reads the novel is full of dramatic irony, since readers of Breakfast of Champions know that Trout's novel is a work of fiction, but Dwayne himself does not.
An example of this dramatic irony occurs when Dwayne reads the following passage:
He also programmed robots to write books and magazines and newspapers for you, and television and radio shows, and stage shows, and films. They wrote songs for you. The Creator of the Universe had them invent hundreds of religions, so you would have plenty to choose among. He had them kill each other by the millions, for this purpose only: that you be amazed. They have committed every possible atrocity and every possible kindness unfeelingly, automatically, inevitably, to get a reaction from Y-O-U.
This passage describes Earth as a wasteland of unfeeling, reproducing robots who only exist because of Dwayne Hoover. Because readers know it is utterly fictional and can refer to any reader rather than Dwayne specifically, the passage is absurd and comic. To Dwayne, though, who takes it as fact, the passage is grave, powerful, and liberating. The gap between the reader's knowledge and Dwayne's means the stakes of this moment are high: readers know he shouldn't react the way he does, and yet they also understand that it is inevitable because of his misunderstanding of Kilgore's novel. This dramatic irony is particularly powerful because it allows readers to experience horror and dread as they watch Dwayne descend into madness.
The structure of dramatic irony, though, is also applicable to American consumer culture more broadly. By trying to illustrate many of the fundamental fictions that guide American life, from advertising narratives to the American Dream, Vonnegut hopes to open up a gap between what his readers now understand and what they understood before reading the novel. To Vonnegut, life is full of dramatic irony that matches the circumstances of Dwayne's madness: people often take fiction for fact and are led to terrible mistakes and injustices. By using dramatic irony directly in the case of Dwayne Hoover, Vonnegut hopes to spotlight and remedy this situation.
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