Irony / Literature

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• Oceania in Nineteen Eighty-Four purged a lot of pre-revolutionary notions (ex. capitalism, nationalism, even peace) supposedly in the name of ushering in true proletariat power...only to re-purpose and regurgitate them in Big Brother's image ("War is Peace," "Ignorance is Strength," etc.) in the name of preserving the Party's power.
• One chapter in America (The Book) discusses a possible future in which the Conservatives' worst fears about immigration come true. In this possible future, whites become a marginalized minority, forced to work as itinerant day laborers. In their words, the greatest irony of the situation is that they don't realize the irony of the situation.
• Isaac Asimov:
  • "Little Lost Robot": The NS-2 robots were made because regular robots could not be convinced to stop "rescuing" people from places with increased radiation, which is far more dangerous to positronic circuits than it is to living tissue. A single NS-2 manages to solve the problem by pointing out to the regular robots out they aren't going to help the human anyway, and will also be unable to help other people in the future. No wonder he didn't want to obey these inferior meatbags...
  • "Nightfall (1941)" and Nightfall (1990): The characters are frantically trying to prepare society for the terrible effects that a sudden plunge into total darkness might have on a civilisation that knows only ever-present light. However, it turns out that the catalyst for driving everyone mad isn't so much the darkness, but the millions of smaller lights that suddenly appear when the stars can be seen, leading everyone to realize that far from being the centre of the universe, their world is actually very small and insignificant indeed.
• This happens three times in Battle Royale in one scene alone:
  • Yuko inadvertently kills every one of her friends in an attempt to stop their deaths after they take in Shuya who she witnessed accidentally kill a classmate. If she hadn't, then they would have all escaped, which is what she wanted in the first place.
  • Satomi kills everybody in the lighthouse except for the actual killer of Yuka.
  • Yuko is the only survivor of the lighthouse massacre, despite being the one who (inadvertently) started it.
• Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie is chock full of this. Let's take two just characters:
  • Morveer: At the start, a master poisoner with a devoted apprentice. He always whines about how the profession of poisoner is horribly undervalued and unrespected. Monza is suspicious of him from the start, and tries to turn his apprentice against him for security. By a complete accident, she succeeds too well; the apprentice misunderstands Morveer, thinks he's going to betray them, and tries to kill him. He kills her, believing that Monza deliberately wanted to replace him, and starts acting against her. In doing so, he poisons every leader but Monza who might have united Styria, effectively turning her into the best candidate for queen. After he gets killed by his own poison, something he spent the entire book warning his apprentice to be careful of, Monza uses him as a scapegoat to deflect suspicion from her over the death of the other leaders, turning Morveer into the legend he always wanted to be.
  • Friendly: A mass murdering Serial Killer with no understanding of right and wrong, and a severe case of OCD over numbers. Guess who's the only character in Monza's party not to betray anyone else's trust in any way, or commit any murder of innocents, or cause any other form of collateral damage? And guess who saves Monza's life from the ally she had trusted most at first? That's right, in a novel filled with betrayal and revenge, the obsessive sociopath is one of the most trustworthy and upright characters.
• Exodus 17:14 reads "I [God] will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven". The only reason anybody remembers Amalek nowadays is because they're in The Bible.
• In A Boy Named Queen, the titular character is the subject of mockery in his school because of his nickname. The worst of the bullies are Connor and Parker. The irony is that Parker is a huge fan of the band Queen's dad was a part of, The Sky Warriors.
• The Catcher in the Rye provides a meta example - it's been banned/challenged many, many times over the years, with most objectors citing profanity and/or sexual content. The inherent irony of this (Holden thinks kids should be shielded from "FUCK YOU"'s and sexy stuff, after all) always seems to evade them.
• City of Light: Ravidel Shand strongly opposes the senate appointing a temporary dictator to handle a crisis. Later, they appoint him to the position himself.
• The Crimson Shadow: When Brind'Amour is magically spying on Avon's royal palace, he notices a cyclopian standing guard before a tapestry depicting men of Avon defeating cyclopians, who now rule their land under King Greensparrow.
• Discworld:
  • A Hat Full of Sky
    • Annagramma always says the word "literally"... but never literally.
    • When he invited a parasite which destroys the minds of all its hosts inside his brain, Dr. Sensibility Bustle didn't demonstrate a lot of sensibility.
• Jeanine from The Divergent Trilogy is convinced that Divergents threaten society. As it turns out, Divergents were the point of this particular society's creation in the first place.
• In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel Legends of Camelot, Percival, on his first quest as a young man who was raised in seclusion, is Curious as a Monkey, much to Donna's annoyance. When she leaves him on his own at the Fisher King's castle, she warns him not to ask anybody any questions. That works out just like it does in legend. For added irony, Donna spends much of the book trying to prevent the bad things that happen in the myths; she just didn't know that one.
• In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files novel Turn Coat:
  • The White Council denies that there is any such thing as the Black Council. Therefore, Ebenezer proposes dealing with the issue behind its back: by denying the existence of a conspiracy, they force a second one into existence. Harry comments on "a twofer with a sidehelping of irony" — especially since this new conspiracy could be pointed out as the Black Council to cover the original one's tracks.
  • One of the eponymous characters is the Wrongfully Accused Warden Morgan, who ends up hiding out at Harry's place. The irony is that he's been convinced that Harry's a traitor since before the series began, and now needs the innocent man he's been hounding for over a decade to prove his own innocence.
  • In the series in general; Harry's original mentor manipulated him for his own purposes, including Harry's sexual development and (first) relationship with the other apprentice, Elaine. When Harry gets his own apprentice, Molly Carpenter, she's both a) sexually experienced, possibly more than he is, and b) really, really hot for Harry. Between his own past and the part where she's his best friend's daughter, he simply can't see her that way and explicitly tells her so, no matter how traditional it is for wizards and apprenticeships. Her feelings for him never actually go away, turn into outright love, and hurt her down the line because he didn't want to hurt her.
  • Susan kept Maggie hidden to protect her from Dresden's enemies only to be betrayed by Martin, her close friend and ally.
• In the Family Tree Series, Luther informs his fresh-out-of-high-schhool daughter Abby that their next door neighbor, Zander Burley, has asked for her hand in marriage. He tells her she has to marry him—not only because Luther sees it as a good marriage due to the social connections and is a controlling sexist who doesn't think much of his daughters, but because the Burleys are one of the richest families in town and that if Abby marries Zander, she'll never have to worry for money for the rest of her life. Abby turns Zander down the first time but accepts his proposal five years later after living on her own. Many years later after Zander's drinking problem leads to his death by falling overboard on a ferry and drowning Abby finds out that, while Zander had made quite a lot of money as a writer, he'd spent it as fast as it came in and had been sending large checks to his parents in Maine ever since their business failed; his parents could only afford their new smaller house with Zander's assistance. Furthermore, he never told her any of this while their family lived a lavish upper-class lifestyle in New York City. Abby has to take on and works hard to pay off all Zander's many debts herself—without asking Luther for any help other than a car and to live in the beach house she lived in as a child when she moves to Maine—and works multiple odd and often humiliating jobs to support their four kids, moving them around in order to stay employed. Worrying about money is all Abby does because of Zander's choices until she reunites with and marries her childhood friend Orrin.
• In First Casualty by Ben Elton, a policeman named Douglas Kingsley stands as a conscientious objector and refuses to join WWI. After he's put in prison and is nearly beaten to death there, the Intelligence service feigns his death and then enrolls him to conduct an anonymous investigation of a murder of an officer in Flanders. Right then fate seems to pick up a huge mallet named "tragic irony" and start hammering poor Kingsley on the head with it. He can't stop contemplating (and others can't stop reiterating) about how feeble and absurd the notion of "murder" sounds in the middle of the unthinkable massacre that is WWI. But wait, in order to obtain the evidence he has to follow a raid into the German lines and eventually joins the fight, kills some Germans, leads the raid safely back and is awarded a medal! But wait, again! He finally manages to exonerate the suspect and save him from the firing squad...only for him to be blown into "red dust" right in front of Kingsley's very eyes.
• A Fly Went By: The characters all thought that the one behind them wanted to hurt, or in some cases, kill them, but they turned out to be just as scared as the others were, with the exception of the sheep, who started the whole thing but was just an innocent sheep in need of help.
• Dru Polar from Fusion Fire is defeated by the exact same ability/technique he was trying (and failing) to create to increase his own power to virtually unbeatable levels.
• Girls Don't Hit: It's a book about Joss, a woman who's very skilled at "hitting" (contract killings) and will certainly hit in the more general sense as well, along with her female apprentice Echo.
• In "The Golem", the old couple has just prevented a Turned Against Their Masters war, but don't seem to think it's worth writing about to their friends.
• In Good Omens, Famine, seems to be a big fan of the concept. For example, he created nouvelle cuisine and a bunch of diet products because watching rich people pay lots of money to be hungry tickled his funny-bone. He also found a way to add fat and sugar to said diet foods and market them as fast food, so he could watch poor people die of simultaneous obesity and malnutrition.
• Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi:
  • The Lan clan practice asceticism and yet, several members are romantic in nature.
  • When Wei Wuxian was a student, he did not get along with his teacher. However, he turned out to be a great teacher for the junior disciples who all listen to him.
  • In the past, Jiang Cheng often told Wei Wuxian to not bother Lan Wangji since Lan Wangji seemingly despises Wei Wuxian. In the present time, Jiang Cheng would become the person that Lan Wangji hates the most.
  • When A-Qing was alive, she pretended to be blind as part of her scheme to rob people. Xue Yang would blind her for real.
  • Jin Zixuan was the only member of the Jin Clan to have a personal feud against Wei Wuxian long before he founded demonic cultivation but he was also the only one from his clan who didn't condemn Wei Wuxian for using The Dark Arts.
  • Wei Wuxian became the Yiling Patriarch to take revenge on the Wen clan for slaughtering most of the Jiang clan. He would become hated by all the clans because he protected the Wen clan's remaining survivors from persecution and death.
• Halvgudene: has an interesting example, as the English description for the 3rd book calls 'forbundet', the 'alliance'. But the 'alliance' isn't like the allies of World War II, they're more like the Nazis.
• Harry Potter:
  • In the Half-Blood Prince, Snape stops teaching Potions class and teaches Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts and is replaced by Professor Slughorn. Previously Potions was Harry's worst subject because he hated Snape and never made the effort in class. In his first class with Slughorn he finds a second-hand book labelled as "the property of the Half-Blood Prince". Inside the book are vast amounts of hints that help Harry in his Potions classes, making it his best subject. Then the big reveal is that Snape is the Half Blood Prince. At one point in the book Harry even makes a throwaway remark that The Prince was "a much better teacher than Snape". Lastly, supplementary material states that the Potter family built their fortune on creating potions.
  • Another Half-Blood Prince example: Slytherin Blaise Zabini, who is revealed in this passage to be black, shows the usual Slytherin Fantastic Racism against Muggle-borns, half-bloods and pure-bloods whom he regards as "blood traitors" (that, is, they don't support Voldemort).
  • The people who seem to care the least for Harry (Vernon, Petunia, Snape, Aberforth) are the people who sacrifice the most of their own security and commodity to keep him free from Voldemort.
  • Although everyone agrees that Professor Trelawney has not a whit of divinatory talent (most of the time), it happens that every single prediction she makes eventually comes true. Largely this is because they are extremely vague or already probable (for example, telling Harry, who's been marked as the nemesis of the Dark Lord, that he is in danger), but even so, her ultimate record is astoundingly perfect.
  • Ron comes from a big family that are quite poor and has a lot of hand-me-downs. Harry lived with his aunt and uncle who were a respectable middle-class family. When it comes to having to rough it in the wilderness in the seventh book, Ron isn't used to starving because his mother always cooked good meals - while Harry had endured plenty of starvation living with the Dursleys. The irony here is that the boy who grew up in poverty was actually quite spoiled, while the boy who grew up with a prosperous family had been treated like a servant.
  • Despite (indeed, partly because of) striving to be immortal, Lord Voldemort lived to be only 71 — a typical lifespan for a Muggle male, and a slightly short life for a wizard.
  • And speaking of Muggles, Voldemort hates them — even though he came from a family that suffered from Royal Inbreeding and the only thing that saved him from a life of intellectual inadequacy was a fresh infusion of Muggle DNA.
  • Wormtail, who had a small group of friends that cared for him, became a Death Eater and betrayed said friends, hoping he would find great power and respect within Voldemort's court. Instead, the betrayal leads to Voldemort losing his physical body and the Death Eaters collapsing, forcing Wormtail to spend the next thirteen years as a rat in hiding. Even when he does eventually help Voldemort regain a body and reunite the Death Eaters, they all treat him like a pest and Voldemort puts an enchantment on Wormtail's artificial hand to strangle him at the first hint of disloyalty. In betraying his friends for Voldemort, Wormtail knew nothing but humiliation for the rest of his life, and ultimately lead to the death of his master.
  • The three people who use the Resurrection Stone die shortly after they use it. The first user, Cadmus Peverell, killed himself upon realizing that the stone could only bring visages of his dead lover, who was perpetually cold and distant because she did not belong in this world anymore. The second user, Albus Dumbledore, is affected by a terminal illness thanks to a curse Voldemort placed on it, and basically rots away until Snape mercy kills him. The third user, Harry Potter, is straight up killed by Voldemort (although thanks to a loophole, he gets better).
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Ford Prefect wipes a bottle of liquor with his towel. Instead of the liquor dirtying up the towel, it actually cleans it, since the liquor in question is highly antiseptic.
• Hollow Kingdom (2019): In a world where zombies have been breaking all the glass in sight for months, S.T. the crow crashes into two separate windows in the span of a day.
• In Jam by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw a group of survivors in the wake of the Jam related apocalypse, have formed a tribe around "irony", or at least what they think is irony, such as calling their leader, a blonde, "Princess Ravenhair". One of the main characters points out that their understanding of irony is completely wrong.
• James Bond:
  • The titular character is one of the most famous fictional Brits in pop culture. Turns out Ian Fleming got the name from American orinthologist, James Bond.
  • Fleming chose the name James Bond because he considered it to be the most boring, nondescript name imaginable. Thanks to association with the character, James Bond is now considered to be one of the most impossibly cool and recognisable names in the world.
• An in-universe example in Jingo. Nobby Nobbs uses Socratic irony on Colon to point out the flaws in his thinking about the Klatchians. It's not entirely clear whether he's using Obfuscating Stupidity on Colon, or if he's honestly baffled by the contradictions Colon is blissfully unaware of.
• The entire plot of Jurassic Park is basically caused by irony:
  • John Hammond's famous Catchphrase of "spared no expense" is a load of bogus: he tried to keep the number of employees to a bare minimum (so he wouldn't have to pay any of them) and had a number of the park's essential systems run by computers that were all managed and kept running by a single technician who he also short-changed, so the technician came to develop a grudge against him and did a sloppy job. While Hammond did spare no expense on the cool things the guests would encounter (the dinosaurs, the restaurant, and the guides), he skimped outrageously on the finer details that kept the park running.
  • Also, the death of Ed Regis, who leaves two helpless children to deal with the loose T-Rex and flees into the jungle. After the T-Rex goes away without having eaten any of the group, he steps out of hiding and attempts to take charge but then the juvenile Rex comes out and noms him.
• Le Morte d'Arthur. It's called "The Death of Arthur". Unsurprisingly, the whole thing is tragic irony, as Arthur struggles to build a just and fair kingdom, only for his own knights, and his own actions to set in motion the events that lead to his death, and the collapse of the kingdom. Time and time again, especially as the story approaches the end, it seems as though Arthur just might save it yet, only for cruel Fate to invert the situation to its opposite. The bit about the snake is downright mean. Also an example of situational irony produced by the title, as Arthur doesn't actually die, being put on a ship to Avalon.
• Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor has a part where Luke dismisses a potential girlfriend as being too abrasive and says he doesn’t like redheads. His eventual wife in the Star Wars Legends is Mara Jade, a fiery redhead who’s quite frequently very abrasive.
• The Maze Runner. In "The Fever Code", the second of two prequels to the original trilogy, Newt and Sonya are revealed to be brother and sister. Newt vows that he will never forget Sonya's original name, Lizzy, only to have all memory of her erased before he goes into Group A's Maze. In addition, he is one of the three subjects (the others being Minho and Thomas) who later turn down the chance to have their memories restored, so he never remembers Sonya's true identity.
• In Misery, Paul Sheldon is a writer who kills off the protagonist of his pulpy romance novels (the ones he only still writes because the money they make will let his kids go to college) because he wants to move on and write in other genres instead (specifically, Fast Cars, a gritty crime story about a car thief). He is injured in a car-crash, rescued by Battleaxe Nurse Annie Wilkes who also happens to be Misery Chastain's biggest (and craziest) fan, and forced effectively at threat of torture to write a new story that Retcons her death and gives her a satisfying conclusion. What starts as a simple Scheherezade Gambit ends up with Paul undergoing a Creator Breakdown and writing a Darker and Edgier Gothic Psychological Horror where Misery has to escape being Buried Alive and the story also delves into her family history in Darkest Africa. When Paul escapes, he keeps the story and sells it on to massive critical acclaim, and even he is forced to admit that Fast Cars was pretentious and Misery's Return is the best story he's ever written.
• In Moby-Dick, Ishmael winds up floating to safety on the coffin Queequeg had built when he thought he was going to die of a fever.
• Raphael Santiago from The Mortal Instruments is a vampire. It's said that he puts on a cross and visits his family every Sunday.
• In Murder on the Orient Express, it is revealed that the murder victim was himself responsible for the murder of a small child (based on the Lindbergh kidnapping), but had gotten away with it. One of the passengers comments on what an abominable act that is, and says "We are not so wicked as that in Germany." The interesting part is that the passenger's comment is not considered ironic within the book itself, which was published in 1934, but becomes a fine example of tragic irony a few years later.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has a very good example of situational irony. The main character is charged with statutory rape. He fakes insanity and gets himself committed because he thinks it'll be easier than going to a work camp. The knowledge that he's not insane and doesn't fit in makes him get on the bad side of the staff, who label him as genuinely insane and lobotomize him.
• In One of Us is Lying, Simon used his app, About That, to create power for himself by keeping the school in fear of having their secrets exposed. He hurt a lot of people with it, resulting in one Attempted Suicide. In the process he isolated himself from any potential friends, becoming a miserable loner with only one friend he treated like crap. It becomes clear throughout the book that he didn't hurt anyone with his app so much as himself. Up to and including the suicide.
• In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry, who espouses an amoral hedonistic philosophy, tells Dorian, his new young friend, that "you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit." By the end of the novel, Dorian has sunk into the depths of depravity, committing every sin known to man, while it becomes apparent that Henry is really only all talk.
• In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, Penny and Claire go to the Science Fair at night to talk Ray down from destroying the place in a fit of rage. They promptly lose their tempers with a sidekick guarding the place, known as Miss A, and destroy the place themselves, more effectively than Ray would have.
• One part of the quest in Ready Player Two sends the group to an educational world. Wade says it will be the hardest part of their journey due to the time he spent there in his youth coinciding with the death of his mother. When they get there and find out what they need to do, Wade reveals that he already completed the necessary tasks in his youth, making it the easiest part of their journey.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: In Nanao's Troubled Backstory Flashback, she leads the survivors of her army's rearguard in a suicide charge at the enemy general's position, and cuts down a samurai who tries to stop her without hardly slowing down. She's finally surrounded by ashigaru just before reaching the general, and as a Last Request she asks for a duel with his son-in-law Yasutsuna, whom she's heard is the greatest fighter of her clan. The general is enraged, and tells her Yasutsuna was the man she just killed, before ordering the ashigaru to run her through.
• The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: During Mel's first meeting with Tristan, a secretive government agent, he takes her out for coffee so she can consider the job he offered. Mel suspects Tristan of trying to subtly profile her as they talk, and so orders a random drink off the cafe's menu to thwart him. As soon as they sit down Tristan remarks that she ordered a random drink to stop him psychologically profiling her, and that this actually tells him far more about her than just ordering her usual would have.
• Roys Bedoys: In “Happy New Year, Roys Bedoys!”, Roys is the first one to fall asleep despite having recently complained about Flora getting sleepy, then Loys is the only one not to fall asleep despite being the youngest.
• The Silmarillion: When Maedhros finally got the chance to lay his hands on one of the Silmarils, it burned his hands to the bone. Maedhros realized that all the atrocities he and his brothers had committed in their quest to reclaim the Silmarils, had at the same time made them unworthy to claim them. The impact of that realization drive Maedhros to suicide.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Sansa Stark is a proper and haughty noblewoman who believes that Beauty Equals Goodness and quickly latches on to handsome and princely men. Yet the only men who genuinely care for and don't manipulate her for their own means are ugly people: Sandor Clegane (whose face was horribly scarred by his brother), Dontos Hollard (fat and blotchy-skinned), and Tyrion Lannister (a broken-nosed dwarf).
  • The Valyrians were the reason why slavery is so widespread and acceptable in Essos. Daenerys, the last scion of the Targaryens, a family of Old Valyria, is an extreme abolitionist who violently conquers three cities to dismantle their practice of slavery.
  • Mirri Maz Duur kills off Daenerys' son in womb to prevent him from becoming the prophesied Stallion Who Mounts the World. Except it ends up paving the way for Daenerys to hatch not one but three dragons, a much more devastating result, considering dragons can grow to adulthood in a few years, whereas a human child need decades to achieve full potential. Plus, as pointed out by Jorah, the Dothraki only follow the strongest, so Rhaego would have likely been killed anyway as soon as Drogo died. Had Mirri not cursed Daenerys, the latter would have spent the rest of her life as a broken widow in Vaes Dothrak, but instead she gives her a means to conquer the world.
• In "They're Made Out of Meat", the viewpoint characters discuss what they should do about a planet of meat-based intelligences (humans). They decide to ignore the "meat", and then talk about how lonely the universe would be if you couldn’t find alien life.
• Universal Monsters: Book 2 has Don Earl Abernathy, a vegetarian, becoming the flesh-eating Wolf Man.
• In The Wasp Factory, Frank despises women. If only Frank could realise the fact that she is a girl raised as a boy...
• Warrior Cats:
  • In Outcast, when Hollyleaf sees Breezepelt getting ignored by his father Crowfeather, she thinks she's glad he's not her dad. Three books later, it's revealed that he IS her dad.
  • Another example happens in Night Whispers, when Flametail tells Lionblaze that he once was glad they were related, but now he's glad he's not related to a murderer. Yet his grandpa Tigerstar had been a murderer when the series began.
  • Plus, there's a part in Code In The Clans where Leafpool said that there were rumors that Owlstar of ThunderClan had kittypets as ancestors, and she says he doesn't. But as it turns out in Thunder Rising in Dawn Of The Clans, Owlstar does have a kittypet for a father.
  • In Sunrise, Sandstorm boasts about how when she retires, she'll be such a cranky elder that she'd make Mousefur look sweet by comparison. Come The Apprentice's Quest, however, and she's become a kind and sweet-natured elder.
• Wax and Wayne: The local Crystal Dragon Jesus of Scadrial is known as the Survivor. He's dead. His older brother Ironeyes is the god of death, and is still alive. It turns out that the Survivor came back to life, and is now immortal because he can refuse to pass on. So the Survivor attained immortality by dying, and Death simply didn't die in the first place.
• Wicked: After saying the terribly Fantastic Racist line "Animals should be seen and not heard", Madame Morrible is questioned on the meaning of it. She tries to state that it was meant to be ironic and that Doctor Dillamond and the other offended Animals simply don't understand the irony behind it. Neither does Elphaba for that matter.
• The Witchlands: Kullen is one of the most powerful Airwitches in the world. Airwitches use their powers by breathing. Kullen has asthma.
• World War Z has the various countries using music to draw out the zombies, usually relying on their own ethnic music. The United States uses Iron Maiden's "The Trooper". This is ironic for two reasons: 1) Iron Maiden is a British band and 2) the band's mascot (Eddie) is a zombie himself.
• The Year of Rogue Dragons: Dorn lost his arm and leg because a red dragon bit them off when he was a kid; the combination of this, the trauma of having iron golem limb replacements fused to his body, and being forced to fight in the arena for his master's sake is what made him become a dragon hunter by trade. He ends up in love with a female dragon (albeit with her attractive human form).
• There's an Irish poem that compares the careers of poets to engineers and has a mocking tone where it states that engineers are overlooked in favour of poets. At first glance it seems like straight up satire since an engineer is a very important job and is looked highly upon by society while a poet is thought to be frivolous since they don't earn good money. However the true irony comes with Fridge Brilliance — in the long term, engineers end up being forgotten while poets are immortalised forever through their work. Think of it this way — do you know the name of the man/woman that built that brick building down town or do you know who wrote "The Road Not Taken"?

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