The Guest

Irony entails using words in a manner often contradictory to their accepted meanings, frequently in attempts to convey humor. As a literary device, irony can involve words, statements, or situations utilized to create denotations or realities veering from readers’ go-to expectations. In the context of a literary work, irony may manifest itself in narrators’ remarks, as well as in characters’ comments and unforeseen plot outcomes, depending on the work’s genre.

In “The Guest,” the narrator’s descriptions of the weather culminate in the story’s ironic ending. For example, the repeated evocations of the snow covering the ground as white and dirty and of the dirty light peeking out of the afternoon sky display irony in that typically one thinks of snow and light as positive in their respective purity and capacity to reveal. These ironic details—along with other meteorological oddities, namely that a long, intense drought has been rapidly followed by an unannounced snowstorm—find an echo in Daru’s ironic comment, “Odd pupils!” as he welcomes the two adult men into his classroom devoid of students. As the schoolmaster persistently refuses to carry out the gendarme’s orders, the latter, contrary to character, asserts that he, too, finds the task of tying up men shameful.