Humor (Humorous devices)

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Humorous device:
Humor is a literary technique that is used with the intention of making the audience laugh or induce amusement. A humorous device is a technique in which what a person means and what they say do not correspond. Some of the examples of humorous devices include verbal irony, pun, oxymoron, hyperbole, sarcasm, situational irony, dramatic irony, understatement, and malapropism. This paper will discuss verbal, situational, and dramatic irony, hyperbole, malapropism and some of their examples.
Verbal irony is when someone says words that are contrary to the truth or when a person says opposite to what they mean. A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift is an example of verbal irony. He starts discussing the sad state of the deprived children by saying that any person who will make the children sound useful as members of the commonwealth deserves his sculpture put up for a preserver of the state (Swift 20).
Situational irony also called the paradox of events; it brings out an outcome that is humorous but unexpected. A situational irony example is portrayed in the book gift of Magi by O. Henry where a man offers his watch for sale to purchase a comb for his wife while the wife trades her hair to purchase a watch chain for the husband. They both sacrifice but their gifts seem useless at the end (Henry 10).
Dramatic irony is when the viewers are cognizant of what will happen, but the characters of the play are not aware. An example of dramatic irony is seen in the novel Romeo and Juliet where Friar Laurence’s message fails to reach Romeo that Juliet plans to poison herself to death.

The audience knows that Juliet is not dead, but Romeo poisons himself claiming he cannot live without his love (Shakespeare 472).
Hyperbole is a tool which uses exaggeration to emphasize a point or idea. For example, the girl broke the guy’s heart into a million parts to mean that the guy was affected by the breakup.
The malapropism is the misuse of words in an ironical manner based on confusing similar sounding words. For example, after the floods, the rains damaged our house, and we had to evaporate the house. The word evaporates stands for vacating the apartment.
In conclusion, humorous devices are used as a literacy tool to capture the attention of the audience. Some of these devices create curiosity while others bring laughter to the audience.

Works Cited
O.Henry. The Gift of the Magi and Other New York City Stories. 2015.
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. 2013.
Swift, Jonathan. A Modest Proposal in Plain and Simple English. 2013.