Sunday in the Park: Using Irony

In the story “Sunday in the Park” by Bel Kaufman, a lot of irony is used. Irony is an incongruity between expectation and reality, or appearance and the truth. Writers often use irony to let readers know something that a character does not know. An example of irony in the story could be when the wife is thinking “The whole thing was as silly as that, and not worth thinking about.” (line 109) But she actually is making a big deal of it and getting mad at her husband. Another example can be seen when it says “She always said that she wanted Larry to learn to fight his own battles.” (line 33) And that is what she is thinking, yet a minute later she defended her son by saying sharply “Don´t do that Little boy, you mustn’t throw sand.” (line 35). Another very clear example can be seen in lines 115-116. The wife at first was criticizing the big man for his attitude and how he was being rude to her husband but at the end of the story you can see the wife was disappointed on his husband’s cowardice and that she expected to stand up more for his son. When Morton said “If you can’t discipline this child, i will.“ (line 113), the wife replied “You and who else?” which was the same exact phrase the big man told Morton in line 69 as a threath and that the wife criticize. As you can the whole story is ironic but have to pay close attention to identify where you can find the irony.