Irony Used in Story Telling

            The use of irony in storytelling has been used for countless centuries, from the classical Greek myths to O. Henry’s twisters, from Aesop’s fables to Jack Kerouac and the beats.  Irony is a powerful storytelling tool primarily because it disrupts the flow of the reader’s train of thought, it smashes his predictions, it causes excitement, suspense and laughter.  Sometimes, it is used incorrectly—the ironic plot twist or climactic event is too foreshadowed, predictable, and therefore, not ironic.  Irony, then, can only be effective when the reader isn’t expecting it.  The two classic short stories, “The Cathedral,” by Raymond Carver and “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin demonstrate two different ways irony can be utilized, to produce dramatically different effects on the reader—yet still provide an interesting, entertaining plot twist.

            In Carver’s “The Cathedral,” the narrator continuously points out, throughout the story, is anxiousness and slight animosity towards the blind man, his wife’s friend.  In fact, the narrator looks condescendingly upon the blind man even before meeting him, merely by listening to accounts of him by his wife.  At one point, the narrator mentions feeling sorry for him.  He wonders about the relationship between Robert and his deceased wife, whether they had sex, how pathetic it is for a blind man to get married to a cancer-ridden woman and bury her a few years later.  The narrator mentions his feelings on Robert and his deceased wife half-heartedly listening to his wife speak about them: The narrator feels superior to his wife’s friends—not only because they do not live the type of life he leads, but more importantly, because they have disabilities.

            The irony of the story becomes apparent when the two men, the blind man and the narrator, draw a cathedral while closing their eyes.  For the narrator, who is not naturally blind, the drawing of anything with his eyes closed is a bit apprehensive to him—yet he allows the blind man to guide his drawing.  Carver’s main point behind this plot twist is that in fact, it is not the blind man who is “blind” but actually the narrator who refuses to see the harm he causes by making judgments about people, about his wife, before thinking them through.  The irony of Carver’s story is subtle, satisfying.  It does not overpower the plot or the characters, yet it is a realistic ironic twist that reveals the epiphany of the narrator.

            Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” however is much more dependent on the ironic twist than is Carver’s.  In Chopin’s story, the wife, after learning of her husband’s death, begins to fantasize about the single life ahead of her, until she sees her husband, alive and well, after which she promptly dies of heart failure.  The irony of this story is that the wife, who normally should have been distraught over her husband’s death, takes it lightly and selfishly—rather than weeping and paying respects to her supposedly dead husband, she imagines the ways it has helped her become “free.”  But when the husband enters the house, it is not he who is dead, but it is she—a demonstration of karma; the woman who takes another man’s death lightly and selfishly dies herself.  The irony overpowers and dominates the plot.  The characters are not developed; they are just stereotypical people.  Instead, the ironic twist is the main point of the story—that the woman dies upon seeing her live husband, after fantasizing about her life after his death.