“I’ve been courting you for over a year, and it’s the hardest work imaginable.” Dick to Charity. If he indeed has been at this for over a year, her parents should have named her Chastity. Nonetheless, the aptly named Dick (his name is even ironic) has been enjoying the presence of Charity, obviously with courtship not being an odorous detail whatsoever. "work" indeed.... If it was actually work, a gentile southern plantation owner would have had a slave doing it for him. He does ring a truer statement when he next pleads “Are you never going to love me?” What a complete and utter moron. Ignoance wins the day in the end, when he wins Charity(case's) heart.
The most obvious ironic hook comes late in the game, as most ironies do in the form of Grandison not only successfully escaping, but taking along with him the whole kit and caboodle of family members to the free country of Oh…. Canada…. Oh… Canada. There is a deeper more profound twist to this end. It relates to the beginning. Even before Chesnutt drops his first paragraph, there is the title. “The Passing of Grandison” The author tricks us all. While “passing” many times serves as metaphor for “death”, the passing in this instance is the passing of a slave into a freedman. Final thought; think if the title had read, “The escape of Grandison”, gives it all away doesn’t it?
Oh, for anyone that has no time to read, us with such busy lives, there is a video rendition of this story.
Acted out by LEGO’s…….
One can learn a lot,,,, from a lego……
Decker
lego my Chesnutt's
Great work here. You do a really thorough and convincing job of explaining each example of irony.
ReplyDeleteAnd the legos ... well, that's pretty fantastic too.