Irony is a word that has been around in my life since I was six years old. I remember it exactly, the day that the word entered my vocabulary. My mom and I were driving to my grandmas house and I was reading a Calvin and Hobbes comic from the paper earlier that morning. Calvin had been saving a snowball in the freezer for 4 months and was going to use it. He snuck up on his nemesis, Suzy, and threw it as hard as he could, and missed. He goes into hysterics, wondering how he could have missed that perfect shot, while, at the same time Suzy is scooping up the pile of snow lying in front of her. Calvin turns in time to see Suzy grinning as she hurls it in his face. The last panel has Calvin lying on the ground with snow on his head, saying that the irony of this is sickening. I asked my mom what that word and she told me to look it up when we got home. Ever since then, Irony has been one of my favorite words, because of the sarcasm and wit involved to use it. The Oxford English dictionary defines irony as the use of words designed to convey a meaning opposite to the literal sense, with the design of indicating dissent, disapprobation,or contempt;censure or ridicule under cover of praise or compliment; covert sarcasm or satire. This means that you can make fun of someone, and make them feel really dumb, which is something that the media loves to do. The T.V. shows Saturday Night Live, Friends, Fraiser, and The Simpsons are all perfect examples of irony. Fraiser is a show that loves to use the concept of irony to play with the characters of the show, getting them into some precarious situations. Irony in entertainment isnt something new though. In greek tragedies, famous playwrights used irony to entertain audiences for years. Sophicles used irony in one of his most famous plays, Oedipus where a young couple, who were King and Queen of a land, were told by a prophecy that their son would kill the father. Frightened by this...
