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Definition of Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given situation, and that of the... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a... read full definition
Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Welcoming the Ghetto:
When rumors begin to circulate that a ghetto will be created in Cracow, some Polish Jewish people welcome the prospect of segregation. In a cruel twist of dramatic irony, they believe the ghetto will offer them protection:
[…] Oskar began to get hints from his SS contacts at Pomorska Street that there was to be a ghetto for Jews. He mentioned the rumor to Stern, not wanting to arouse alarm. Oh, yes, said Stern, the word was out. Some people were even looking forward to it. We’ll be inside, the enemy will be outside. We can run our own affairs. No one will envy us, no one stone us in the streets. The walls of the ghetto will be fixed. The walls would be the final, fixed form of the catastrophe.
Stern’s assertion that some Jewish people were “looking forward” to the creation of a ghetto in Cracow is bitterly ironic given most readers’ historical knowledge of the Holocaust, the progression of which is also foreshadowed in the novel’s prologue. Although some people naively hope the ghetto will shield them from persecution, readers know in actuality it will serve as a stepping stone to even more brutal harms, specifically the creation of the Płaszów concentration camp. The word “final” feels particularly chilling here, given how it echoes the Final Solution, the name for the Nazi’s plan for the genocide of all Jews, of which segregation into ghettoes was a relatively early step.
