Blog 4

Irony is defined as a discrepancy between the expected result and the actual result in a situation. In several of the poems we read we see how the authors use irony in their writing.

Theodore Roethke’s "My Papa’s Waltz" is very ironic. When you first read the title of the poem you think of a daughter dancing with her father maybe on her wedding day. The author leads the readers to believe the poems going to be a caring and touching story. What the poem is actually about is completely different. The story is about an alcoholic father who beats his son. You begin to question the meaning of the title when the author writes "The whiskey on your breath could make a small boy dizzy". And then we find out that the waltz in the title is a comparison to the motion the two make while the son is beaten and carried to bed.

Another ironic poem is Fleur Adcock’s "The Video". The title itself is not ironic like the previous poem. The first stanza in the poem describes a loving family who all stayed in the delivery room when the youngest daughter was born. The author talks about how they all watched as the father videotaped the child being born. Then they talk about the older sister watching the video over and over again, and as a reader you think the girl is moved by the tape and wants to keep watching it. Then we find out the girl likes to watch it in reverse to see her sister go back in so she can be an only child again.