The irony present in human society
A principal source of interest in short stories is the use irony. Authors show irony through the use of literary techniques in order to add to the total effect of their stories, which is the message of their short story. An author of short stories who demonstrates irony through the use of literary techniques in order to convey the message is Margaret Atwood in her collection of short stories called The Tent. Atwood in her short stories “Thylacine Ragout”, “Post-Colonial” and “Chicken Little Goes Too Far” shows irony in order to convey that humans are selfish and are overcome with greed through the use of various literary techniques. It can be argued that Atwood through the use of irony has a more hopeful tone towards humans and shows that they are not greedy in for example “The Tent”, but I think she uses irony to convey that humans are selfish and greedy.
The short story “Thylacine Ragout” is placed in the first half of Atwood’s collection of stories in The Tent. Atwood conveys irony in this story through the use of juxtaposition and allusion in order to convey that humans are selfish and greedy. This story is allusion to the humans wanting to clone the Thylacine, a tiger, in order to save it from going extinct, but end up eating the cloned Thylacine in the end. This whole situation is conveyed as ironic because the humans start off trying to save the Thylacine, which shows that they are selfless because they care about matters beyond themselves, but end up caging it to entertain them and then eating it. “They got some DNA out of a bone and they emptied the nucleus out of the egg of a Tasmanian devil and the put the Thylacine bone DNA into the egg, and it grew, and they implanted it…and finally they cloned the Thylacine.” (Atwood, 2006c, p.73) This demonstrates that the humans start off selfless and wanting to help another animal. However this is juxtaposed with what the humans eventually end up doing to the cloned Thylacine. “One day it was there, in solitude, in singleness, in its cage,…and then it was gone. It was sold…Avery rich person witch refined tastes at the Thylacine.” (Atwood, 2006c, p.75) This conveys that the human greed and selfishness overcame the want to be selfless and ended up exploiting the Thylacine for their own purposes. Atwood also conveys a similar ironic situation in “Thylacine Ragout” through the allusion to a woman named Trugannini. Trugannini is the last woman to survive in the last fully Aboriginal Island. Humans try to pay respect to her by honoring her, but ending up using her as a commercial name in order to sell their goods and earn money. “This even made the headlines, of course it did, and they named the Thylacine Trugannini, a name you see on restaurant menus in that pat of the world, as a gesture of respect perhaps.” (Atwood, 2006c, p.74) This suggests that humans start off trying to be virtuous towards this woman in order to pay respect to her. However this is juxtaposed with what they eventually end up doing to her dead soul. “Thylacine Trugannini, a name you see on restaurant menus in that part of the world, as a gesture of respect perhaps, or a way of selling something, or a commemoration, as on tombstones…whose bones were dug up and put on display for a hundred years, against her will, but she was so what will did she have, what right do the dead have to will, they are dead after all” (Atwood, 2006c, p.74) This whole situation is presented as ironic because humans start off claiming that they are respecting this dead woman by honoring her name, however they end up using her as a commercial means to satisfy themselves. They put her dead remains up in a museum despite it being against her will, in order to entertain themselves. Atwood conveys both the situations explained, to be ironic since humans start off trying to be selfless, but end up being defeated by their greed. The ironic use in this story helps effectively convey the message that humans are selfish and greedy.
