stingly Owen uses irony when writing letters home to his mother. In Wilfred Owen: Collected Letters he writes on 16 January 1917: Three quarters dead, then realizing the implications and irony he corrected himself by writing I mean each of us dead(393). Other examples of the accidental use of irony exist throughout WWI literature Im sure. Fussell argues that the use of irony comes from memory. He states that irony is a tool used to recollect certain events that would otherwise go unnoticed. What assistsrecall is precisely the ironic pattern which subsequent vision has laid over the events (Modern 30). Fussell uses Gunner Charles Bricknall as an example of this phenomenon. Bricknall recalls seeing new troops standing along an often-shelled road and telling the recruits about the danger. Bricknall wrote Ho, what a disaster! We had to go shooting lame horses, putting the dead to the side of the road, what a disaster, which could have been avoid if only the officers had gone into action the hard way. That was something I shall never forget (31). Fussell continues that A slaughter by itself is too commonplace for notice. When it makes an ironic point it becomes memorable (31).Other questions arise when working with irony. Does it make the writer sound educated? No. In Vera Brittains Testament of Youth irony is a subtlety. For example she writes of other places such as Oxford being much better than home yet upon discovering it firsthand finds it somewhat disappointing. Neither this nor any of the previous examples would help in any way to promote ones I.Q. level.Can the use of irony be used as a scapegoat to avoid giving gruesome details? In most cases this is true. In The Middle Parts of Fortune the language was more graphic than the time period allowed and was edited for this reason. In using ir...
