Valentina Filenko
English 248: Paper II
Bradley Bleck
June 4th 2010
Irony Makes The World Go ‘Round

SUMMARY:
Nothing in life is ever simple--especially freedom. In his article “A Slave in Form but Not in Fact”: Subversive Humor and the Rhetoric of Irony in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Mark K. Burns writes about how Frederick Douglass is faced with the challenge of showing his independence/freedom from white society through his writing; and doing so while using their own language. Burns writes about how Douglass overcomes this obstacle mainly through the use of irony.

Mark K. Burns first starts off by explaining some of the challenges Douglass was faced with in his writing; pointing out that Douglass was somewhat limited in his choice of literary discourse to begin with. Though a slave, Douglass was confined to using language more similar to that of a slave-owner rather than a slave. Also known as the “dominant discourse“, or in other words, more educated and refined language. Burns then tells us that the reason for this was because of the “abolitionist role” Douglass was intended to fulfill as well as for generic reasons. By using the “voice of his oppressors” though, Douglass is doomed to failure and/or hypocrisy; so his real challenge throughout his writing is to tell of his struggle for freedom, to the very people he‘s just been liberated from, with the use of their own language; while at the same time of course somehow managing to distinguish himself from those very same oppressors and the rest of the slave narratives already written.

Burns goes on to write how--or more specifically through what technique--Douglass designates to overcome these challenges. Despite the constraints he was faced with, Douglass managed to distinguish himself, from both other writers and his oppressors, through the use of subtle ironic humor. This constant irony throughout the text causes one to see the Narrative as something other that what it at first glance may appear. Burns then goes on to say how in literature, irony can be a powerful dangerous tool with the potential to be employed with “deadly serious effect“. This is the technique Douglass uses in his text--using layer upon layer of irony in his text in order for the language he uses--the “dominant discourse”--to be taken as ironically as the rest of his writing.

Douglass uses several different layers of irony in his writing. First and most visible and obvious is the basic sentence-level irony. There are several ironies here: micro-level irony, which would imply the exact opposite of the meaning intended; ironic understatement, which though not the exact opposite, still manages to be sufficiently diverging from the intended meaning; situational irony, which is making puns while seeming to be oblivious; and ironic juxtaposition, which is the strategic placing together of “conflicting words or images”. In his essay, Burns provides specific examples of these particular ironies, giving us a clear picture of what he means. All these slight ironies accumulate to establish a critical and non-literal viewing of the text.

Another level of irony Douglass employs is ironic reversal. This is where he provides a positive passage, only to quickly counteract it with an undercutting passage. Douglass thoroughly re-images his first, positive passage with it’s complete (negative) reversal, “effectively cancelling whatever position impression” it may have made on the reader. All the offered positive first impression does is increase the force of the effect of the negative impression which follows. This repeated counteraction once again works toward making Douglass’s main point-- that one can say one thing while really meaning something different.

Douglass’s other layer of irony is the overall “large-scale” stuff: contextual and textual irony. “Contextual” irony meaning the large-scale “juxtaposition and arrangement of passages” while “textual” is the “general prose style of work”. Burn’s doesn’t go into detail about the contextual irony, but explains that because of the textual irony employed, several crucial moments in the text are somewhat overlooked as they happen to be a little bit too understated. Burns suggests however, that this may be purposely done in order to bring to attention the ironically vast distance between the reality of the event and Douglass‘s forced constrained discourse in the depiction of it.

The final irony though, in order to ensure Douglass’s “dominant discourse…[be] profitably read“ was his use of religion. Throughout his writing, Douglass constantly balanced both skepticism in the Christian Church and belief in the Christian faith; leaning neither one way nor the other, but rather keeping the two opposite manifestations in tension. He at once embraced Christianity while at the same time pointing out all its corruption. Douglass’s purpose in intertwining religion with irony was to infuse religious allusions into the text, only to later reverse them; yet once again demonstrating that the surface can be deceptive. Douglass understands that he is writing in dominant discourse, and so therefore is trying to discredit the importance of it through ironizing and subverting it.

RESPONSE:

Douglass’s main concern throughout his writing was discrediting the importance of writing in “dominant discourse”. This was important to him because that was basically the only option he was left with, considering his role as an abolitionist and his generic constraints; yet doing so would make him a hypocrite in the eyes of all. “Because Douglass is forced to adopt the language of his masters as he records his experiences, then he is confronted by a unique dilemma as he writes his autobiography--how to signal his independence from the white society whose language he must borrow. Without somehow distinguishing his voice from those of his oppressors, his narrative is doomed from the start to failure or hypocrisy” (Burns 84). Douglass’s text was aimed more toward white people than anyone else--white people who obviously understand their own language better than any other. As for the “generic reasons”, we can’t forget how Douglass manages to master literacy--through the help of his mistress. So his literature was structured by “white Christian standards”, limiting his power to define and express himself his own way. So Douglass had to hit upon a way to do both--discredit the importance of the language in order not to look the hypocrite, and distinguish himself not only from his oppressors, but also from earlier narrative writers.

The way Douglass resolves this dilemma is rather impressive: he employs ironic humor. Seriously, who would’ve thought? To quote Friedrich Schlegel however, as Burns does, “irony is no joking matter”--which Douglass does a sufficient job of demonstrating to us. “What the Narrative does, in fact, is construct layer upon layer of irony: it begins by frequently signaling on the sentence level that many of its statements are meant to be taken ironically; continues by erecting larger structures of irony that undermine several textual passages which seem to depict certain aspects of slavery in a positive light; and finally enshrouds the text in an enveloping cloud of irony by adding an appendix that establishes after-the-fact Douglass’s ironical attitude towards the religion that underwrites the ideology of slavery. This thorough crop dusting of irony over the entire terrain of the text in the end implies that the Narrative’s language is meant to be taken as ironically as the rest of the work” (Burns 85). Douglass juxtapositions the good with the bad, the positive with the negative, making the contrasts between the two all the more striking and thereby more effective on the reader. Ending each idea with the horrendously negative aspects, Douglass effectively erases the earlier somewhat positive language--leaving only the bitter images of his and others’ suffering.

Douglass’s writing emphasizes how we as readers need to read things other than how they appear--look beneath the surface, search for deeper meaning. Because more likely than not, it’ll be there.