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Dialect
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
Part 1, Chapter 3: The Red Candle
Explanation and Analysis—The Lucky Servant:
Stories become Lindo Jong’s saving grace, as she convinces Huang Taitai of their doomed marriage. For the household servant, it is a stroke of great fortune and, for the reader, it provides a particularly comic instance of dramatic irony. Overjoyed at the news, the family servant dedicates herself to pious tribute in the months and years thereafter:
I heard later she was so struck with this miracle of marrying Tyan-yu she became a very religious person who ordered servants to sweep the ancestors’ graves not just once a year, but once a day.
Having been granted inside knowledge, the reader sees through all this. In fact, the servant girl’s sudden good luck is not so much the work of Heaven as it is a mischievous 12-year-old girl. Neither the instructions for her marriage to Tyan-yu nor the prophecies of his death are the least bit true: Lindo has simply strung together an elaborate, fictionalized account of a nightmare in an attempt to end the marriage. According to Lindo, staying in the marriage would set off a “cycle of destruction” and lead to Tyan-yu’s death. She makes fools of her mother-in-law and the bride-to-be, who misinterpret her dream as the work of divine forces rather than the desperately clever ruse it is. Lindo Jong gets a breath of freedom—and a good laugh—out of this rare release.
Related Themes:
