Telling the listener little stories about random people’s unluck, in “Ironic” Alanis Morissette uses multifaceted irony, failed examples of irony, and sad imagery, in order to explain that life is “a little too ironic” and bad situations tend to get worse.
The song is made of two little “ironic” stories and a third verse filled with little everyday examples.
In the very first story, an old man wins the lottery and dies the next day. It seems really unlucky that he played all his life and dies directly after he finally won. If he won earlier in life, would he have had the chance to really spent the money and have a better life, or would he have died even than? Another question is, if it’s really that exciting for an 98- year old, to win that much money. Eventually he already lost parts of his mind or maybe he wasn’t in physical shape to really enjoy what he could’ve done with the big win. Also, the example of “ten thousand spoons when all you need is a fork” states misfortune. The exaggerated number of spoons you don’t need pushes the statement to irony.
In the very first story, an old man wins the lottery and dies the next day. It seems really unlucky that he played all his life and dies directly after he finally won. If he won earlier in life, would he have had the chance to really spent the money and have a better life, or would he have died even than? Another question is, if it’s really that exciting for an 98- year old, to win that much money. Eventually he already lost parts of his mind or maybe he wasn’t in physical shape to really enjoy what he could’ve done with the big win. Also, the example of “ten thousand spoons when all you need is a fork” states misfortune. The exaggerated number of spoons you don’t need pushes the statement to irony.
The second story is about a man who is afraid to fly and when he finally does it, “the plane crase[d]s down”. He waits his entire flight to take one single flight and exactly this one flight happens to go wrong. The chance of dying in a plane crash is 1:3.000.000. The example of the plane crash killed man also is sad imagery. Alanis describes how he “kissed his kids goodbye” and gets on the plane. Many people who are scared of flying will understand his fear, and feel with him when the irony lets him die. He obviously leaves a family behind. He leaves the question why he actually got on that plane, as well. But not the entire sog is made of sad imagery. Some are more heartbreaking than others, for example the “ran on your wedding day” is by far not as tragic as death.
Sadly, this song contains a couple of failed examples of irony. Most of her examples happen unexpected and serve as a little shocking aspect of sarcasm. But when she sings “It’s like rain on your wedding day”, there obviously is the opinion of expecting a nice day on your wedding. The big issue of this little statement is to find the difference between hope and expectation, so it definitively be fine to hope for good weather, but not to expect is. Weather is a random thing, and not influential at all. There are many days in the year when it rains, and it is not shocking or totally sad, when one of those days happens to be a wedding day. Another example is a “traffic jam when you’re already late”. Is this really such a bad thing to happen. If someone is late already, he is late anyways and nothing can change that. A traffic jam will only cause the person to be even later than he is anyway.
Although the song contains a couple examples of failing irony, Alanis Morissette wrote a song that is stuck in everybody's head forever and won’t ever go away again.
Sadly, this song contains a couple of failed examples of irony. Most of her examples happen unexpected and serve as a little shocking aspect of sarcasm. But when she sings “It’s like rain on your wedding day”, there obviously is the opinion of expecting a nice day on your wedding. The big issue of this little statement is to find the difference between hope and expectation, so it definitively be fine to hope for good weather, but not to expect is. Weather is a random thing, and not influential at all. There are many days in the year when it rains, and it is not shocking or totally sad, when one of those days happens to be a wedding day. Another example is a “traffic jam when you’re already late”. Is this really such a bad thing to happen. If someone is late already, he is late anyways and nothing can change that. A traffic jam will only cause the person to be even later than he is anyway.
Although the song contains a couple examples of failing irony, Alanis Morissette wrote a song that is stuck in everybody's head forever and won’t ever go away again.
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