"ironically" again

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Sep 5 13:46:41 UTC 2006


>From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>Ron writes:
>
>>"[I]f one is setting out to make a movie about dangerous creatures,
>>one does not really expect to be killed [by a dangerous creature], so
>>the sense of irony in which things turn out to be the opposite of what
>>one might expect also works here."
>
>>Works for me.
>
>Me, too. My first reading of the irony involved, though, wasn't from
>anything in the text itself, but from the larger context that the reader
>was expected to know: that this was *Steve f-in' Irwin*.
>
>After all, this is a guy who makes his living *not* getting killed by
>dangerous creatures. Therefore, it's ironic that his demise came about
>while he was doing his job, except in this case he did*n't* avoid
>getting killed by one of them.

Except that in this case it apparently wasn't even one of the most
dangerous critters (or at least not under normal circumstances) that
did him in. So the ironies just abound.


LH

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