Rape Fantasies By Margaret Atwood

Irony is the use of words to express something different from and opposite to

their literal meaning. It is used with tone and style to create humorous

situations. There are various forms of irony. Margaret Atwood uses situational

irony, dramatic irony, and verbal irony in "Rape Fantasies".

Situational irony refers to circumstances in which bad things happen to good

people, or in which rewards are not earned because forces beyond human

comprehension seem to be in total control. Margaret Atwood uses situational

irony in Estelle’s first rape fantasy. Rapists are violent criminals that

violate women physically, mentally, and emotionally. Estelle’s would-be rapist

is patient and understanding. You’re intending to rape me, right? and he nods,

so I open my purse to get the plastic lemon, and I can’t find it!… so I ask

him to hold out his hands, like this and I pile all this junk into them and down

at the bottom there’s the plastic lemon, and I can’t get the top off. So I hand

it to him and he’s very obliging, he twists the top off, and hands it back to

me, and I squirt him in the eye." (277) In dramatic irony, characters have

only a nonexistent, partial, incorrect, or misguided understanding of what is

happening to them. All of Estelle’s rape fantasies start out as serious

situations, but quickly turn absurd. In Estelle’s fantasy, the rapist has a cold

and should be home in bed. The rapist allows Estelle to take care of him and

forgets why he climbed in her window. "…god knows why he even bothered to

get out of bed, you’d think if you were going to go around climbing in windows

you’d wait until you were healthier, right? I mean, that takes a certain amount

of energy. So I ask him why doesn’t he let me fix him a NeoCitran and scotch,

that’s what I always take, you still have the cold but you don’t feel it, so I

do and we end up watching the Late Show together." (279) Word choice is the

characteristic of verbal irony, in which what is meant is usually the opposite

of what is said. A good example of verbal irony is when the rapist grabs

Estelle’s arm. Estelle says, sad and dignified, "You’d be raping a

corpse." (280) Margaret Atwood uses these different forms of irony to

create a humorous story out of a serious situation. Women having rape fantasies

is ironic in itself. Without all the ironic situations, this story would be

boring and bland.

Atwood, Margaret. "Rape Fantasies". Literature: An Introduction to

Reading and Writing. Eds. Roberts, Edgar V. and Jacobs, Henry E. 1998:275-281