Mark Twain's use of Irony The Nortorius Jumping Frog Essay

Mark Twain's use of Irony The Nortorius Jumping Frog - Essay Example He was a keen observer of human beings and did not like much of what he saw. He believed that people were often very foolish or cruel and the literature he wrote in response to this plainly brings people to task for being this way. However, to simply state this proposition is not an effective means of communicating it. It becomes a much more powerful idea when Swift uses rhetorical devices like satire and irony. We believe the story until the end. We become invested in the story of the gambling on frogs. Only at the end do we realize it is a joke. This is one of the first indications that we are dealing with a satire or parody. In a satire, a narrator appears to be endorsing something he is actually mocking. This is done by using irony. Irony can be a very effective rhetorical method, pouring contempt on an idea or principle much more harshly than a straightforward attack. Irony sneaks up behind you and ambushes you. It is a good way to rhetorically attack problems and situations that are right in front of you and that many people might want to defend. With irony you can attack but others will not realize you are attacking until it is to late (Horn 76). This is what Twain has done in The Notorious Frog. For ma ny who picked it up, it would take some time to realize it was all a joke. When they did realize it was a joke, they would be shocked and begin to really think about what Twain meant. This is an especially militant form of irony—something Twain truly excelled at. People will always take advantage of one another. Gullibility is omnipresent. A lesser writer might have been tempted at the end of the story to reveal the whole thing to be a joke. But Twain is a rhetorical master. He realizes that consistency is everything in rhetoric: if you shift out of the voice you appear disjunctive and lose the full effect. That is what makes the final paragraph of the story so powerful: even at the end, Twain and his narrator claim he is