All 6 Uses of
irony
in
To the Lighthouse
- "James will have to write HIS dissertation one of these days," he added ironically, flicking his sprig.†
Part 1
- And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr. Ramsay ironically, ...) ... The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.
Part 1 *ironically = when the truth is very different than what might be expected
- With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her…†
Part 1
- So they were sent for walks together, and she was told, with that faint touch of irony that made Mrs. Ramsay slip through one's fingers, that she had a scientific mind; she liked flowers; she was so exact.
Part 3irony = when what happens is very different than what might be expected
- She smiled ironically; for had she not thought, when she began, that she had solved her problem?†
Part 3
- She had looked at him ironically from her seat in the half-empty hall, pumping love into that chilly space, and suddenly, there was the old cask or whatever it was bobbing up and down among the waves and Mrs. Ramsay looking for her spectacle case among the pebbles.†
Part 3