Use Of Dramatic Irony In Boy At The Window

Essay B

In William Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet”, unknowing of Juliet’s “foolproof” plan to let her and Romeo be together backfires exponentially’ shocking both her and the reader. This is known as irony, a literary device that affects the reader’s perception of the story. Richard Wilbur makes good use of irony in his poem, ” Boy at the Window”, to develop the poem to its conclusion. Wilbur initially causes a conflict with irony, in lines one and two of stanza one, “Seeing the snowman standing all alone in dusk and cold is more than he can bear.” Yet, in lines and two of stanza two, we gain a new perspective, ”The man of snow is nonetheless, content, having no wish to go inside and die.” Immediately we are shown dramatic irony. Dramatic irony, in a sense, is when the reader knows information a character in the story does not, just as we know that the snowman doesn’t want or need to go inside, because he knows just …show more content…
In lines four, five, and six of stanza two, “Though frozen water is his element… he melts enough to drop from one soft eye a trickle of the purest rain, a tear.” The point of view in the story changes based on this irony. As stated by the title and the second stanza, at the end of the poem, the viewpoint is that of the snowman. The snowman emotionally is affected by the boy’s weeping, causing his emotions to go awry, so that he defies nature, and forces himself to melt, until a tear drops from his bitumen eyes. So he is overjoyed that the boy cares about him, yet he feels for the boy as well. Sadly, the boy fears for the snowman, and this ignorant, unknowing fear is what makes the snowman “weep” for him. So even though the boy wishes for his snowman to be inside, he is ignorant to the truth of nature that we all, but him, have come to