Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Irony Blog 3
Ok....so this is the most random and far stretched connection i could possibly formulate, and honestly that makes me a little happy. In chapter 9, The Tournament, Twain uses Irony in a way that i didn’t notice at first. I think in order to understand what i mean we must look at religion. The Holy Grail is a Catholic "episode" The search for the Holy Grail has fascinated, perplexed, and excited Catholics for years. SO much so, they even made a movie about it.lol The DaVinci Code is a book that pretty much claims to have figured out the puzzle, and though the movie didn’t do as well as i thought it should have, it did make some what of a splash, i think the reason for this is because, although this search is older than dirt, the satisfaction one gets went they "figure out" or simplify religion is satisfying in a new way...ok, so where am i going with this. Hank knows the affects religion has on every aspect of life, government, society, and so on. He understands that to incite a revolution, which is his ultimate goal one must have various outlets. When he opens with the story, which i think is cleverly placed, he talks about "the Grandness of the tournaments". He speaks highly of the knights and praises them in a way, by speaking admirably about their traditions. Now, when he goes into the story about how not funny the jokes of Sir Dinadan are he makes sure to not lead the audience to any specific conclusions about him. However after reading on I felt like this guy was very annoying. Now my annoyance is that which i think i mirrored by Twain, AND Hank. I think this is a good example of irony because though Twain is the ultimate voice of the book, through Hank, who in himself carries with him a whole host of characteristics the story carries in such a way, as to help to audience see the barbarism and ludness of the kings court, which is what Hank wants to say, without having to say it. Now the audience has Hank’s View, and upon further reading the story begin to unfold for me at least, more influenced by Hank and Twain.
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1 comment:
What you're doing here is engaging with _one_ level of irony in the book. _Hank_ says things that he doesn't mean, knowing that the reader will get them anyway - he ridicules the knights when he says things that seem to express admiration for them.
Note that in the assignment, though, I asked for irony in the sense of a distance between Hank and Twain -- not Hank saying one thing and meaning another, but Hank saying one thing and _Twain_ meaning another. So you're simplifying the assignment. What you examine is a good example of irony in one sense, but not in the sense we were looking for.
I think you lost the thread about the holy grail, which is too bad, because I as interested in saying how you were going to connect it...
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