Hoping to end relations between Daisy and Jay, Tom did not hold back when confronting Gatsby. This whole situation is very ironic considering Tom is also having an affair with Myrtle and Daisy knows all about it. Tom only thought about himself and his image and got terribly mad because there was the chance of him losing his wife. George Wilson, compared to Tom, acts a lot like him except the abusiveness towards his wife, Myrtle. George owned a gas station in the Valley of Ashes and was very poor.
His fingers become covered with a yellow stain and people think that he is hygienically unclean. He forces Toby to do the paper round but exploits him and does not give him his money which angers Toby (221); he has to pawn his rifles. He is referred to as a “sissy” because he initially he does not want to fight Arthur. He abuses him because he discards the almost-empty mustard bottle (171) and when Dwight strikes him despite his finger injury, Rosemary finally knows she must remove Toby from the household.
Because people are making fun of his nose he is able to provide witty humor that makes the book become a comedy. Valvert says “Ah…your nose…hem!...Your nose is…rather large!” “Rather” “Oh well” “Is that all” “Well of course.”(35-36 Act 1) But Cyrano does not leave it like this he replies by insulting Valvert and ultimately making him angry by telling him all the better insults that he could have had. He threw it right back in his face by making it a joke. Throughout the story comedy like this occurs and that is why I believe it is a
Gwendolen wants to marry a man called Ernest, not caring whether he possesses the qualities that comprise earnestness. This is evident as Gwendolen quickly forgives Jack’s deception and Lady Bracknell quickly forgets her earlier disapproval of Jack’s suitability for Gwendolen. Jack, the central character, is initially neither ‘Ernest’ nor ‘earnest’. Through forces at times beyond his control, he becomes both: a symbol of Victorian hypocrisy. Both Jack and Algernon lead a double life, known as ‘Bunburying’, the practice of creating an elaborate deception so as to misbehave whilst maintaining expected social standards of duty and responsibility, essentially, pretending to be earnest.
He subjects the poor characters of his novel to every imaginable evil that man has been wont to commit in order to prove that this could not be the best of all worlds. Secondarily, Voltaire also seems to have other bones to pick. Hardly a paragraph is written that does not contain a sarcastic comment about or outright mockery of some person, idea, or institution. It is a credit to the skill of the author that he is able to present his criticisms with a humor that is as intoxicating as it is relentless and controversial. The sheer number of insults and implications made by the author coupled with a healthy sprinkling of aristocratic inside jokes would indicate that he essentially wrote this book for himself and other like-minded intellectuals of the enlightenment that disapproved of the status quo or could at least appreciate his cheeky sense of humor.
Hamlet was trying to be clever with Polonius as he kept asking him questions that he already knew the answers to such as “…have you a daughter” pretending that he does not know that Ophelia is his daughter. Hamlet was trying to confuse Polonius, making him think he was mad and trying to make Polonius look like a fool in front of the audience. Polonius then asks “…what do you read my lord?” and Hamlets response was “words, words, words.” Then he completes later on saying “Slanders sir, for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging think amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit…for yourself sir should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward”, here we see Hamlets cleverness in insulting Polonius as he calls him old and he has a lack of understanding. Hamlet seems to be scaring the Polonius as Polonius starts stepping back as Hamlets steps near him. Then at the end, Hamlets says “These tedious old fools” which is calling Polonius directly an old fool without trying to hide it as he did before.
The film Holden watches in New York is a phony because everyone laughs stupidly at the end when the dog has puppies. Before I read the book I had never heard of the word Phony, but I had heard of the word fake. The other question I have chosen is: “Holden says that he lies for no good reason. But in the conversation with Phoebe, we find out another part of the reason he lied to Ernest Morrow’s mother on the train . In light of this, does he really lie for no good reason, or is there a reasoning there?” I think he does lie for no reason, but I think that time he didn’t want to get his friend in trouble.
Voltaire used certain literary techniques and language, such as humor, in order to effusively express his contempt of what was happening in his world. Voltaire uses humor from the beginning of the novel, and doesn’t stop until the end. At the start of the novel, he uses names such as “Thunder-Ten-Tronckh” (Voltaire 1) in order to ridicule the guttural way that the German language sounds. This is evident again when Candide asks about a Mr. Vanderdendur, which can be seen as a play on names with a Germanic origin. The name is also supposed to suggest a certain VanDuren, who has gotten into an argument with Voltaire in real life (Voltaire 40).
Verbal irony can also be a form of jokes, or sallies, but not always. For instance, when the lurid Chauvelin said to Marguerite de St. Just, “Your brothers life hangs by a thread. Pray that the thread does not snap!” and after he adds, “Hope you sleep well.” This is verbal irony because after Chauvelin threatens her, he tells her to sleep well. Obviously no one can sleep well after someone tells them that their brother is going to die. So this means that Chauvelin didn’t mean what he said to Lady Blakney after he threatened her.
He is intriguingly different, and his introspection allows us unusually deep into his mind. I initially doubted if a 15-year-old boy would ruffle his 20-year-old sister's hair and refer to her as "a beautiful young woman who meant everything to me", but Joe's exceptional decency eventually persuaded me that he might. After all, Joe says that although his father is "bigoted and blind and stupid", he "couldn't hold that against him". I would have done, but Joe, being exceptionally decent, couldn't. Brooks's use of language is adept.