Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essays on irony in short stories
Essay on the irony of the interlopers
Essay on the irony of the interlopers
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essays on irony in short stories
Have you ever been lead to expect one outcome, but then had the situation turn out in a completely different way? The Interlopers ending is ironic and surprising since the author, Saki, leads the reader to believe the story will end opposite of how it actually ends. In the short story, Ulrich’s and Georg’s families previous feud over hunting land causes tension and suspense. Their feud builds the story and specific details based on the action guides the audience to the unexpected resolution. Irony also helps to develop an unpredictable, surprising conclusion in The Interlopers. Readers expect for a positive ending, one in which Ulrich and Georg may become friends and help each other out. At first, there seem to be no common grounds between …show more content…
At the end of The Interlopers, Ulrich and Georg both hope that their men would come first so they could show heroism to the other man, by rescuing them. While looking far out into the distance, Ulrich shouted, “They’re running down the hill towards us,” after he saw the figures moving rapidly towards himself and Georg (Saki 46). In confusion, Georg asks,”’Are they your men?’. . . ‘Who are they?’” then looks close, straining his eyes to see, “Wolves” racing towards them (Saki 46). Readers infer the conclusion’s irony since both Ulrich and Georg hope for their men to come first, but the wolves reach the men far before anyone else. In addition, suspense adds to the unanticipated ending when the men try to make out who or what Georg and Ulrich see coming towards them, which are the powerful, vicious wolves. Generally, The Interlopers conclusion becomes suspenseful and ironic since it drastically varies from the resolution the author persuades the audience to …show more content…
Irony shown in the resolution is when Ulrich and Georg both think men have come to save them when they see dark silhouettes running in their direction. In reality, once the wolves arrive they eat and kill the men rather than save them as they hope. The author misleads the audience by including many sections in which Ulrich and Georg make up, recognize they must work as a team and agree to provide assistance to each other. Saki guides readers to assume the story will end with Ulrich and Georg helping each other out. Instead, she concludes the story with the men being devoured by wolves, in an ironic, suspenseful, and unpredictable
Throughout the historic course of literature, one story known as “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Cornell has incorporated specific types of irony for multiple differing and fundamental reasons. Situational irony is the first use of ironic elements that will be discussed in regards to the story. Situational irony is defined as “an incongruity that appears between the expectations of something to happen, and what actually happens instead ” (literarydevices.net). The story’s climax offers a unique twist to the plot as it includes an unexpected discovery, ultimately incorporating situational irony into the sequence of events. The story starts out with the introduction of the legendary hunter Bob Rainsford as he is shipwrecked and trapped on a deserted island. While staying on the island, Rainsford is introduced to the eccentric General Zaroff, who is a self proclaimed expert hunter as well. In short, the General turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who forces Rainsford into a game of “cat and mouse”, which causes Rainsford to fight for his life. This state of affair is considered to be situational irony because Zaroff defies the expectations of being a hunter to the audience. This is specifically shown in the text when Rainsford confronts General Zaroff in regards to what he is hunting:
Irony is present throughout a major section of the story and follows the midwifery of Aminata and the unfortunate fates suffered by her own children. Throughout the course of the novel, Aminata makes a living “catching babies” for women of all colors everywhere that she ends up, receiving payment in currency as well as gifts in food and shelter. However, when it comes time for Aminata to have her own child, Mamadu, he ends up being taken from her by her first slave master, Robinson Appleby who ends up being sold to a plantation in the Southern United States. Later in the story, despite her best efforts, she has her second child sent to London during a massacre of black people in Nova Scotia, being separated once again and unable to care for her child. The irony lies in the fact that she catches and cares for so many children in the story, yet when it comes to her own offspring, she has them taken away.
But this time it is for good. The main conflict that is simply that Inman is on a journey going through these trials trying to get back to Ada. Inman is both the antagonist and the protagonist. Inman longs for his home, Cold Mountain, and Ada who is experiencing her own internal journey towards self discovery. There are multiple antagonistic situations rather than Inman being the only one. Inman demonstrates bravery, cunning and especially endurance as he overcomes challenges to be reunited with Ada. The climax is finally reached when Inman, who has survived being hunted through his travels, finally reaches Ada and thus the main conflict of the book is resolved. The climax does end in a tragedy though. After planning their married BLISS, Inman gets shot by Teague ( a local militia charged with rounding up the deserters), and dies in Ada’s arms. The tragic event unfolds quickly as the novel come to a close. But it is not considered a tragedy story because Ada ends up with Inman’s child and his love for cold
Grendel has a sarcastic and cynical mind, which serves to entertain both him and the reader. Through his expositions of situations, we see humor where others would simply see violence, and irony where others only fact. These others are the humans, the Danes, unwitting neighbors of Grendel, forced to stand night after night of slaughter. What is a traumatic and terrifying experience for them, is simply a game to Grendel, and the reader. Grendel bursts in on the Danes, ready to kill, and they squeak. They are funny in their fear, laughable in their drunken fighting. The reader is focused on Grendel’s perception of the Danes. The deaths go by easily, because of the humor involved. It does not cross the reader’s mind that these are people Grendle is killing. The humor allows the reader to sympathize with Grendel’s position, that of the predator. The prey is not meaningful, only nutritious and entertaining. It is a macabre humor, which accentuates how no death is noble, it is simply death. By making the Danes un-heroic and un-ideal, cowards and drunkards, the author is presenting the reality through the humor.
of the wolves and finds that they are more than the savage and merciless hunters
At the conclusion the reader is left with a vision of destruction of human life both literal and figurative that is absurd rather than tragic because the victims are not heroic figures reduced to misfortune, They are ordinary characters who meet a grotesque fate.
Finally after many attempts to earn his friendship, Georg accepted that it might not be an absolutely horrible idea to become friends with his former enemy. He begins to explain to Ulrich the reaction that would come from the town and how different things would be between them. Georg explains saying, “...if we ended our feud tonight...you would come and keep the Sylvester night beneath my roof, and I would come and feast on some high day at your castle…”(Saki.) He goes on by outlining the many possibilities that could come out of their friendship- most of which are positive.
Mowat uses the rhetorical strategy of Logos to try and convince the reader of his claim `that wolves aren’t savage killers by giving the reader evidence that is possible and without emotion. At the beginning of the book, Mowat goes into the “Lupine Project” with the mindset that the wolves are savage killers with no emotion. Mowat later realized when he finally made contact with the wolves that they were conservative and cared for each other. In the text Mowat describes an occasion in which he witnessed when “Angeline would nuzzle her mate... bumping him affectionately with her shoulders”(172). This shows that
For the characters in Angela Carter's “The Company of Wolves,” danger lurks in the the grey areas, the ambiguous spaces between opposites. The plethora of socially constructed binaries—male and female, passive and active, innocence and maturity, civilization and wilderness, man and wolf—have the ability to be harmful and restrictive, but perhaps more worryingly, they create an ill-defined middle ground between where the rules are vague and fluid, which allows for dishonesty and deception, and Carter foregrounds the resultant proliferation of untruths as the real peril. One vehicle for clear and honest communication, however, is the narrator's changing characterization of the
each other. ‘The Interlopers’ tell the story of two rivals who hate each other with a passion,
The first part of the story tells folk tales about the wolf and werewolf. Here, wolves are used as a symbol of fear. It overwhelms the reader with terrifying descriptions of the wolf and shows the reader that the wolf is clearly something that strikes fear into the people in the story. They are described as “forest assassins grey members of a congregation of nightmare” and are known to be worse than “all the teeming perils of the night and the forest, ghosts, hobgoblins, ogres that grill babies upon gridirons, witches”. These monsters are not real and fear for these nonexistent monsters is ridiculous as they are fictional. The fear fo...
For Maxim Gorki and Henrik Ibsen, the "the surprise ending" is a device to highlight the extreme desperation and hopelessness man is often faced. In both cases, the plays end with an act of suicide - The Actor in The Lower Depths, and Hedda in Hedda Gabler. The alcoholic Actor dreamt of a far off hospital that helped drunkards by curing them of their disease. He struggles through out the play trying to find this path to redemption. Hedda tries to control a world that she is trapped in. This control would result in her freedom to exist in true self-expression. Both characters live in denial. They subconsciously understand that these aspirations will forever be fantasies due to their society; they survive restlessly in these worlds of illusion. However, by the end of each play, the illusion crumbles, and both are forced to face the dire truth of their situations. The characters decide to act in the most brutal and finite way to control their own fate, ending their lives. By comparing two powerful and similar surprise endings involving two acutely different characters, Gorki and Ibsen send a similar message. Whether a character's fantastical illusions come in the form of escape, salvation, hope, or control, the destruction of these illusions result in a personal devastation that can be insurmountable.
“The Interlopers” by Saki relates to Bacon’s ideas on private revenge as two men are hurt in the act of seeking revenge. In the past, Ulrich Gradwits and Georg Znaeym’s families have fought over woodland full of game. The feud becomes personal as Ulrich and Georg’s feelings become murderous. On a winter night, both men hunt for the other on the disputed land and they come face to face, “Each had a rifle in hand, hate in his heart, and murder uppermost in his mind” (Saki 305). While seeking and hunting for revenge, Ulrich and Georg are crushed by a tree and injured. Although they hate each other, they realize they were stupidly fighting over a feud they had not started. Under the tree, they argue about who will be found by their team first as they wait, Ulrich speaks, “’Lying here tonight, thinking, I’ve come to think we’ve been rather fools; there are better things in life than getting the better of a boundary dispute’” and they agree to be friends (Saki 308). In the distance, they see what they thought was their...
Not all environmental conflicts are huge, apocalyptic, catastrophic events. They can be as simple or commonplace as a tree falling. Such is the case in “The Interlopers,” by Saki. Saki recognizes the power of nature, and makes use of something so unimportant as a fallen tree to trap Ulrich and Georg beneath it, and dramatically alter the course of the entire story. Not only that, but at the end of the story, Saki uses wolves to change the direction of the story once more, and this time he creates some irony as well.
In general, the discrepancy between appearances and reality is ironic. Irony is encountered throughout our daily activities and comes in many forms; verbal, situational. and the cosmic. Verbal irony is the most familiar kind, this occurs when we understand that.