All Quiet On The Western Front Irony Analysis

In of Mice and Men and All Quiet on the Western Front we see irony and important characters in each book that deliver this message. The two important characters of OMAM are George and Lennie Small. We already see irony here. Lennie is portrayed as a big huge man but, his last name is Small. In AQOTWF we have Kat and Paul who are similar to George and Lennie in too many ways to count. John Steinbeck uses irony in many ways that other authors don’t use. Irony can be funny or it can be very serious. The irony from Of Mice and Men though tends to lean more towards the funny side. A good example of this is the way Steinbeck decided to make jokes about Lennie's size. . Lennie is a big, strong, powerful worker who doesn't use his physicality to harm people (on purpose). Another example is with Curly's wife. She tries to be to be with the other men but she is turned down by them. These authors use special ways to help the reader better …show more content…
Lennie always tried to be nice to everything but kept killing them, the mice, the pup, and Curley’s wife. This is ironic because usually when someone is big and strong they tend to protect people. Instead Lennie hurts them without warning causing great distress between both of them. In AQOTWF Paul is treated well because of Kat. Kat has a sixth sense which helps him guide Paul and the others to important goods like food and shelter which is necessary to survive in a war. When Paul is walking home a surprise attack takes place in the graveyard. Paul looks around his surroundings and describes it as, "A mass of wreckage. Coffins and corpses lie strewn around. They have been killed once again; but each of them that was flung up saved one of us."(Remarque, 70-71.) This is ironic because even if a soldier is dead he can’t escape the war. During the battle the coffins saved many lives of soldier. Hardships like these help define