The Ironies Of Orwell’s 1984 Essay, Research Paper

The Ironies of Orwell’s 1984

The novel 1984, by George Orwell, has many examples of irony throughout it. The

two major types of irony: verbal irony and situation irony, are demonstrated

again and again in this novel. In the following essay I will discuss these types

of ironies and give examples of each from the book.

The first type of irony is verbal irony, in which a person says or does

something one way, but the true meaning is the opposite. One of the first

example of this irony is discovered when the main character, Winston Smith, uses

the “Memory hole” to deposit things — one would think that this would be where

things are remembered (”Memory”), but it’s actually an incinerator. The next

example of irony comes when you learn about the departments of Government in

Oceania. The Ministry of Truth is actually the maker of lies for the history

books, the Ministry of Love discourages love, and the Ministry of Peace is

actually quite violent. The final example of verbal Irony can be seen in the

name of the leader of Oceania, “Big Brother.” The concept of a big brother is

one whom is older and wiser and helps the “littler siblings” — this not the

case with 1984’s Big Brother. The Big Brother in this novel completely watches

over every move a person makes keeping them controlled with fear.

The next type of irony is Situation irony, which is when a character or a

sequence of events appears to be headed one way, but it ends up as the opposite

of what was thought. One example of this is Winston’s general health. From the

beginning of the book, it is shown how horrible his health is and is continually

getting worse and more difficult, but as Winston gets involved with Julia then

he begins a metamorphosis into a more healthy person. Another major example is

the betrayal of many of the people whom Winston thought were his friends, such

as Mr. Charrington and even O’Brien- -who both worked for the Thought Police.

This book is stuffed full of irony, the entire plot of the beginning would makes

the reader expect one reaction and instead, the reader gets twisted the complete

opposite direction at the end for surprise. George Orwell uses irony as sort of

an exhibit, making it virtually the “how to write irony” novel for me.

Throughout the book, all of the irony used became negative and depressing, I

still thought this book made its point successfully and was an incredible novel.

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