Yesterday I was impressed when students identified sarcasm. We were looking at quotes from the final act of 12 Angry Men, which we haven't read yet. They know the characters well now, and had to make a prediction of who was speaking based on their knowledge of the jurors so far. In one period someone noticed that a speaker was being sarcastic, and Juror No. 7 has been sarcastic in the past. Thus he supported his prediction in discussion.
Sarcasm is the tip of the Irony Iceberg, a difficult teaching topic because it can be so subtle, and it feels so difficult (at least to me) to define. Generally, we say that it's when what someone says is not what she means. My favorite example comes from the first line of Pride and Prejudice. When I studied that book at Columbia with a Lit Hum professor, the first few minutes of his lecture on this book boosted my opinion of him as a teacher, and of Austen as a writer. We were 20 unenthused freshman. He was a 78-year-old Russian Lit expert whose continued passion for the works he had been teaching since 1954 baffled us.
Professor: "Look at the first sentence. Irony.
It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.
This is a fact universally acknowledged, but we know at least one person doesn't believe it. Who doesn't believe it?"
[Blank stares from the class. Well, maybe mine wasn't blank. I was racing through the characters of the film version - Lizzie, Jane, Charlotte, Darcy... who the heck is he thinking of? Who doesn't believe this?]
Professor: "The author doesn't believe it."
This blew my mind. Why would the author of the book state as universally acknowledged truth something that she herself doesn't believe?
Enter the narrator who acts less like a trusty servant of the story and of truth, and more like the clever, insightful and witty people we love to talk to.
This makes me wonder, actually, about an opening line of a book that has baffled me. Tolstoy starts Anna Karenina with this truism:
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Does he believe this? His family was not happy - I learned that on an interesting documentary about Tolstoy and his shifting ideology.
Do I believe this? I don't think so. It also depends on whether he is being ironic when he says "happy". If he means a certain outer appearance of happiness, I would be inclined to agree. The statement is then a way of saying that happiness is a cookie cutter state. But I don't think he's being ironic. I actually don't think the beginning of the sentence matters much. The point is that unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. Now, do I believe that? No. It seems to me there is too much shared experience between families, especially unhappy ones. Yes, minor details change, but so many families are unhappy because of poverty, or domineering fathers, or alcoholism, or mania of some sort, or conflicts over inheritance.
Talking about irony is tough with high schoolers, but even tougher when many in the class are not yet comfortable with English to understand the straightforward meaning of a sentence, let alone what lies beneath.
My irony radar has been on high alert since reading Catch-22 last month for the book club. I didn't like the degree of irony in Heller's writing, which delved deeply into angry cynicism. It seemed appropriate for the setting and the content, but it was not pleasant to read. Which, again, I think is part of the point of the book.
Now we're reading short stories by Anton Chekhov, and the level of irony is much more suited to my taste. He observes the ridiculousness of society the way Heller and Austen do, but he doesn't belabor his critique. It's slightly funny, but mostly sad because the people who are on the losing end of every situation are the marginalized, powerless ones. The woman who is simply an object and has no autonomy over her body in "Anyuta"; the woman missing her careless husband in "The Huntsman"; the "puny, exceedingly scrawny little peasant in a calico shirt and patched trousers" who is distrusted by the magistrate and sent to prison in "The Malefactor". These stories break the heart while tingling the funny bone. The delicacy of the craft is so much more interesting than Heller's blunt and angry hammer.
Sarcasm is the tip of the Irony Iceberg, a difficult teaching topic because it can be so subtle, and it feels so difficult (at least to me) to define. Generally, we say that it's when what someone says is not what she means. My favorite example comes from the first line of Pride and Prejudice. When I studied that book at Columbia with a Lit Hum professor, the first few minutes of his lecture on this book boosted my opinion of him as a teacher, and of Austen as a writer. We were 20 unenthused freshman. He was a 78-year-old Russian Lit expert whose continued passion for the works he had been teaching since 1954 baffled us.
Professor: "Look at the first sentence. Irony.
It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.
This is a fact universally acknowledged, but we know at least one person doesn't believe it. Who doesn't believe it?"
[Blank stares from the class. Well, maybe mine wasn't blank. I was racing through the characters of the film version - Lizzie, Jane, Charlotte, Darcy... who the heck is he thinking of? Who doesn't believe this?]
Professor: "The author doesn't believe it."
This blew my mind. Why would the author of the book state as universally acknowledged truth something that she herself doesn't believe?
Enter the narrator who acts less like a trusty servant of the story and of truth, and more like the clever, insightful and witty people we love to talk to.
This makes me wonder, actually, about an opening line of a book that has baffled me. Tolstoy starts Anna Karenina with this truism:
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Does he believe this? His family was not happy - I learned that on an interesting documentary about Tolstoy and his shifting ideology.
Do I believe this? I don't think so. It also depends on whether he is being ironic when he says "happy". If he means a certain outer appearance of happiness, I would be inclined to agree. The statement is then a way of saying that happiness is a cookie cutter state. But I don't think he's being ironic. I actually don't think the beginning of the sentence matters much. The point is that unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. Now, do I believe that? No. It seems to me there is too much shared experience between families, especially unhappy ones. Yes, minor details change, but so many families are unhappy because of poverty, or domineering fathers, or alcoholism, or mania of some sort, or conflicts over inheritance.
Talking about irony is tough with high schoolers, but even tougher when many in the class are not yet comfortable with English to understand the straightforward meaning of a sentence, let alone what lies beneath.
Now we're reading short stories by Anton Chekhov, and the level of irony is much more suited to my taste. He observes the ridiculousness of society the way Heller and Austen do, but he doesn't belabor his critique. It's slightly funny, but mostly sad because the people who are on the losing end of every situation are the marginalized, powerless ones. The woman who is simply an object and has no autonomy over her body in "Anyuta"; the woman missing her careless husband in "The Huntsman"; the "puny, exceedingly scrawny little peasant in a calico shirt and patched trousers" who is distrusted by the magistrate and sent to prison in "The Malefactor". These stories break the heart while tingling the funny bone. The delicacy of the craft is so much more interesting than Heller's blunt and angry hammer.
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