Learning Log #4

In this week's 1st lesson ( 21/7/09 ), we had learnt something called Irony. Mr Chua told us that it could be categorized into four main groups, Verbal Irony, Situational Irony, Dramatic Irony and lastly, Tragic Irony. However, we only learnt verbal, situational and dramatic irony.

Verbal irony is a deliberate comment of what you do not mean. In other words, it's a sarcasm comment that we made nastily to mock at a person or a thing. It will just a joke and make us laugh.

Situational irony is that there is a difference between expected and actual results. For example, in Romeo and Juliet that Mr Chua had shown to us, the readers or audience will normally think that in the end, Romeo will be together with Juliet. But unexpectedly, Romeo thought that Juliet is dead and eventually, he killed himself by drinking the poisonous potion. That was a situational irony as the result of the whole story was different from what the reader or audience expected.

Dramatic irony exists when a character in a literary or dramatic work perceives a situation in a limited way while the reader or audience is aware of a greater significance. For example, also in Romeo and Juliet, the readers or audience know exactly what happened but Romeo didn't know that Juliet had actually taken a potion which makes her appear to be died, or rather to be sleeping for a very long time. Then, Romeo thought that Juliet had died, thus he committed suicide. Being a reader or audience, we will normally felt sad for Romeo and Juliet because Romeo is unaware about the situation and this had led to a huge change in the whole story. We will wonder why Romeo would not want to wait a little longer or perhaps Juliet would conscious a little earlier. Therefore, these are just our own visualisation. We can't change the story.

In the 2nd lesson in Week 4,( 22/7/09 ), Mr Chua went through the effects and uses of Irony. It has three main effects; exposing folly, expressing anger and heightening tragedy. Hence, irony can also be expessed in many ways, not only in amusement, but also in other in other aspects. Lastly before bell rings, Mr Chua gave us a piece of homework about a passage " Something Nice for the Neighbours ".