Have you ever seen a no-birds sigh but a bird standing on on it?

Well that is
called irony and both the stories The Yellow-Wallpaper and The Lottery use it very
efficiently. The master authors Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Perkins hide it under the
cover, and manipulate the stories very well . I believe that The Yellow-Wallpaper and
The Lottery use the rhetorical device of irony to create a gloomy tone.
The Yellow-Wallpaper has a lot of irony. At the beginning, the narrator and her
husband are moving to an old house, It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like
John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer(Perkins, 9). She is not happy
moving to the old abandoned house. Later the irony is demonstrated, It is big...the
whole floor nearly , with windows that look all ways and air and sunshine galore(
Perkins, 12). The narrator is expresses her feelings toward the house as disgust and
unhappiness, but the she says it is beautiful, with its sunshine galore.
In The Lottery by Shirley Jackson has irony. At the beginning, the towns people
are joyful because they are gathering for a lottery. The morning of June 27th was clear
and sunny...the flowers were blossoming.The people of the village began to gather in
the square ...the lottery that takes place...their jokes were quite and they smiled rather
than laughed (Jackson, 1). In a ordinary lottery people are happy because they know
the prize will be lots of cash, but in this story, it drastically different, they still
remembered to use stones...Tessie Hutchinson was in the center It isnt fair she said.
A stone hit her on the side of the head...Mr.s Hutchinson screamed and they were upon
her (Jackson, 7). Instead of winning cash, they won death.

The Lottery and The Yellow-wallpaper both use irony to create a gloomy tone.
In The Lottery it seems if they were having a normal lottery, the day looked normal,
The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer
day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green (Jackson
1).Then a woman is stoned to death ,and everybody is used to it, it is normal for them.
The tone has taken a very gloomy tone. The Yellow-wallpaper takes the same path.
The narrator has a nervous condition and this is not something new, it is ordinary. As
the novel ends, the same narrator has gone mad, she starts to see a woman creep
about behind the wallpaper and she thinks she has turned into that woman and totally
lost her mind. Also, the tone has changed from ordinary to gloomy .

Both Shirley and Jackson use irony very effectively to create a gloomy tone at
the end. These stories are very engaging because the authors have chosen the
structure of their story very and we can learn from their writing.