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Irony In Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'

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Section #6 - Irony In the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury uses situational and dramatic irony in relation to the character of the Dust Witch. Firstly, situational irony is evident when the author says “Will pulled his bow back, freighted with single destruction. The bow broke in two pieces”. (Bradbury151) He mentions this as Will is attempting to destroy the balloon in order to get rid of the Dust Witch for the night. Instead of Will shooting the arrow out, it broke in two pieces, not achieving the result he would have expected. This shows how unprepared Will was to face the Dust Witch as he didn’t have an extra arrow in case anything went wrong. This depicts situational irony in this event. Secondly, situational irony also …show more content…

A volunteer.”(242) This is represented as the Dust Witch is in a hurry to close her act because she knows she is in danger of being killed, but instead of closing the act Charles Holloway volunteers to participate in it allowing the act to continue. This portrays situational irony because the Witch’s plan to close the act didn’t follow through which shows how much she underestimated Charles Halloway and the boys. Additionally, dramatic irony is also profoundly used throughout the novel. Firstly, dramatic irony is conveyed when Bradbury writes “The crescent moon I have marked on the bullet is not a crescent moon. It is my own smile.”(251) He recounts this as Charles Halloway is about to shoot the Dust Witch with the bullet that is going to end her life. This is because the weakness of the carnival as well as the Dust Witch’s is laughter, so by shooting the Witch with a smile she will perish. This shows dramatic irony because the audience already knew what Charles was up to when he was carving in the crescent “moon” on the bullet. The reader is also aware that he’s about to kill her while the Witch is completely unaware. This portrays her as naive, as she assumed that Charles wasn’t going to come up with a plan to kill her on the stage

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