The Power of Irony
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literature
school essay
published 04/09/2007
review : Completed
level : Advanced
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Johann Goethe and John Milton both imbed verbal irony in their characters soliloquies which presents two different points of view between what the character is saying and how the reader interprets it. In Goethes The Sorrows of Young Werther, the reader sympathizes with Werthers intellectual reasoning and his passion for what he believes in. None the less, it is through Werthers passionate words that the reader finds faults with the characters perceptions, thus creating a distance between the reader and Werther. The same can be said for the character of Satan in Miltons Paradise Lost. Miltons portrayal of Satan makes the reader want to sympathize with him, but at the same time one finds it morally wrong to do so.
Table of Contents
- In the letter from the twelfth of August, Werther narrates a discussion he had with Albert that describes their disagreement
- Albert declares that 'a man wholly under the influence of his passions has lost his ability to think rationally and is regarded as intoxicated or insane.?
- If one finds sympathy in his earlier argument that it is wrong to do this, it now becomes impossible to empathize with Werther since he is doing what he found to be so intolerable
- The same kind of self-indulgence that is found in Werther can also be attributed to the character of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost
- It is not only the language that Satan uses which draws the reader to him, but also the sound of the passage pulls us in
- Satan's self-indulgence can also be seen in Book IV where he is again discussing his fall from heaven
