Irony is hard to define, but you know when you don't see it.
Irony is the gap between ideals and reality, the gap between expectations and what happens.
It was ironic of Thomas Jefferson to defend as "unalienable" the rights of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness while he owned slaves.
It was ironic of Abraham Lincoln to author an Emancipation Proclamation that only freed the slaves in the states that had broken away from the Union.
It was ironic of African-Americans to fight a war against Nazism abroad and return to racial segregation at home.
When I first read his definition (a gap "between ideals and reality or between expectations and what happens"), I didn't agree that defined irony. Yet, his examples seemed ironic to me, though not to Shu. Shu thought his examples just defined hypocritical. What do you think?
Originally posted by Kalleh: When I first read his definition (a gap "between ideals and reality or between expectations and what happens"), I didn't agree that defined irony.
That is one of the definitions of irony:
2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things.
