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Examples of Literary ironies

Following is a collection of all Literary ironic questions that have been added by our visitors. If you have an example of something ironic (or not!), add your ironic question.

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Ironic Questions: Literary

Is It Ironic That...?

226 Severus Snape is killed by a snake, his Hogwarts House mascot.

227 the only word that you spell right on a spelling test is "illiterate"?...

228 that you can be or not to be as Hamlet would say?

229 A man with the last name Shakespeare is completely illiterate?

230 While arguing to defend that someone else is in fact "clever", that someone would misspell the word "they're" as "there"....

231 In a Clean, well-lighted place, one of the last lines is "He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep."...

232 A company that makes lenses for glasses messed up an order by misreading the prescription?...

233 in a meeting with the Oracle at Delphi, the young heir to the throne of Thebes learns that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus understands that this is to be his fate, so he runs away to avoid it. If he believes he is doomed to become an incestuous murderer, then it will happen no matter what he does. If he does not believe the prophecy, then there is no need to flee. Oedipus hurries away from the Oracle, with every step moving towards his fate, not away from it. He must have known this, but he was still compelled to take action against the unavoidable future. He could not simply let his tragic fate befall him, but there was no possible way to avoid it - the very essence of fate is that it is certain....

234 "'Sure, that's what I mean," Doc Daneeka said. "A little grease is what makes this world go round. One hand washes the other. Know what I mean? You scratch my back, I scratch yours.' Yossarian knew what he meant. 'That's not what I meant,' Doc Daneeka said as Yossarian began scratching his back. 'I'm talking about cooperation. Favors. You do a favor for me, I'll do one for you. Get it?"...

235 Country is, as a word, so close to county?

236 someone newly identified as promiscuous is reading "The Scarlet Letter" in class...

237 the most famous writer of proverbs, poems and sayings is anon?

238 when the boy who cried wolf for the third time (when there actually was a wolf), he was ignored by the people who had twice believed there was a wolf when there wasn't?...

239 Boo Radley is depicted in the beginning of To Kill a Mockingbird as a murderous villain living in a spooky house... but by the end we realize that he is the hero of the book, saving the kids from a murderer. (Many students in my class can't decide if it's irony or not because many of them suspected early on that Boo might be a good guy.)...

240 "water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink" from Rime of the Ancient Mariner (he's on a boat in the ocean - salt water only)...

241 "...the knight wants to marry her but she is a loathly woman"