Complicated?  A little.

Sarcasm is biting wit, often by using irony or understatement.

But not always.

So a statement that is ironic, is not always sarcastic.

“I love shopping.”  That is just ironic.
”I love shopping with you, you are so relaxed.”  That is sarcasm, using irony.
“You don’t need assertiveness training course, I have seen the way you shop.” This is sarcasm, however the intended meaning of the sentence is the same as the literal meaning, so no irony is present.  We really do mean that the person is an aggressive shopper.

Sadly, I like sarcasm.  I find it rather hard to avoid.  It is too much fun to just give up.

I might need to get help.

Irony is not that hard to understand, and yet so many people refer to something as ‘ironic’ or say ‘the irony of the situation’ where there is no trace of irony.

Take for example the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette:  None of the situations described by Morissette are in fact ironic, just annoying or bad luck.  In fact the only irony of the song is that there is no irony in it.  Which either makes the writer an idiot or a genius.  (Guess which one I am voting for.)

Verbal Irony occurs when the words used imply an opposite meaning to the literal meaning.  (“I love being sick.  It is so much fun.”)
Situational Irony occurs when the effect of actions is the opposite of what is intended.  (I turn on a torch to see better, and end up blinding myself.)

Irony in literature and theatre usually involves the audience or reader having information that is not available to the character(s).  This creates a tension for us as we note the character acting in a way that will have the opposite effect to what he intends, or being motivated by facts we know will be proved to be untrue.

In Othello and Romeo and Juliet we, the audience, know that Desdemona is faithful to Othello, and that Juliet is merely sleeping.  Othello and Romeo are not in possession of this truth, and thus act to cause tragedy.  In both cases the irony is that they are creating a tragedy they already believe is existing. 

In Forrest Gump, we can see how his interaction with characters in history changed the world.  Forrest Gump has no such knowledge.  The irony is not that his actions are different from what he intends, but that we are aware of the effect(s) which he is not.  This is dramatic irony.

Another example of Irony that is relevant to fiction would be metafiction.  Metafiction (also called Romantic Irony) involves reminders that the story is in fact a story.  Examples would be the author, or even the characters, commenting on the fact that they are in a story, or drawing attention to plot devices. 

Bad luck and stupidity are not irony.  William Bullock invented the rotary printing press, and then was later killed in an accident with one.  This is irony, because had he not invented it, it could not have killed him.  The irony relies on the fact that this was unexpected.   A man who invents a new type of parachute, and dies testing it is not irony.  It is bad luck.  The fact that the parachute needed to be tested in a potentially life-threatening manner removes the irony. 
If however the inventor was walking down the street, and a random stranger fell on top of him due to a failure of the parachute to open… that would be irony. 

So for instance Alanis Morissette singing about “10,000 spoons, when all you need is a knife” is not ironic, just annoying.    Unless of course you need a knife to open a box that happens to contain 10,000 knives.  Then it would be ironic. 

I said at the beginning that irony was easy.

I may have lied a little. 

But that wasn’t irony.

I don’t watch a lot of zombie movies.  I don’t read a lot of zombie books.
I do have a Zombie Escape Plan, but doesn’t everyone?

Yet when I saw the latest book offering from Thomas Nelson Publishing, I had to request a review copy.

I strongly suspect that the book will turn out to be the sort of soppy, thinly-disguised allegory that will make C.S. Lewis turn over in his grave, and that I will be annoyed through most of the book at how they stretch to compare our sinful nature to the un-dead.

So why did I request it?

Because how can I not have a book in the Theology section of my book case called The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook?

Enough said.

I have never read any of the other books in the Christian Encounters series, so I do not know how this compares.

I did find the "Christian Encounter" aspect to be a little… restrained. Little mention was made of his faith, although I did enjoy reading how much he influenced C.S. Lewis in his.

The facts were a little dry, and I found the book skipped over a LOT. I suppose it was trying to be readable while still informative, however I found it a little simplistic. I am not sure if it is perhaps aimed at the Young Adult or older children market, but if so it was a little too academic.

I did learn quite a bit that I did not previously know, but I would have preferred more of an insight into his inspirations and influences, not just his basic history.

If you recall, yesterday I said that I was pleasantly surprised by how good movie of The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe was.  I am a huge Chronicles of Narnia fan.  

However, I believe that they are progressively destroying the fabric of the series with each movie they make. 

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was great. 

Prince Caspian was… less than great.

They made a lot of changes that I felt were un-necessary, and the book was almost unrecognisable.  It still made a decent adventure story, but I felt that much of the original was sacrificed to try and make it more exciting for the big screen.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was…

Terrible.

As an adventure movie it was confusing and disjointed.  As an adaptation of the book it was so different that I challenge anyone to prove it was based on it.

And this is more than just me being a purist.  I can accept changes to the plot, and characters, but they went one step further… they changed the purpose of the book.  C.S. Lewis wrote all his Narnia books as allegories for Christianity.  Some of the key theological points made in the story were reversed!
For example, Eustace Scrubb earns redemption through his actions, not his faith.  The line about him realising in a dream that he could not be free without Aslan’s help, is removed and replaced with him being freed from his transformation as a reward for helping the good guys. 

Some of the best bits were not just ruined, they were changed to actually mean the opposite of what the author intended.  Not cool.

The sad thing is that there are very good movie and television versions of the films made for BBC.  However the latest versions are all being transformed into something they are not to try and make them appeal to a mass market, who have never actually read the books.

I would say it was a good thing if it were encouraging people to read the books, but I suspect they will give up after a few because “They aren’t the same as the movies.”

Sad.

One movie that really did not disappoint though was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  I have mentioned before (repeatedly) what a fan I am of C.S. Lewis, and his Chronicles of Narnia were quite formative for me; both in my early faith and my writing.  

So it was with some trepidation that I went to see this adaptation of a childhood favourite.  I was not unimpressed.  The made changes to the story, as is usual, however it still had that spirit that the books had.  It still caught your heart and mind, and made me feel like a 8 year-old reading it for the first time.

Altogether, a movie I would recommend as a companion to the book.

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So I am going to look at this question in a more extreme way and talk about my favourite book dealing with an alien culture.  Which is about as foreign as you can get.

There are many great fantasy and science-fiction books which create and deal with foreign cultures.  Examples that spring to mind are the Culture stories by Iain M. Banks, The middle-earth stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, and pretty much any work of speculative fiction that takes place in a different time or place to our own.

But to my mind the greatest example would be the works of Ursula K. Leguin.  Her Hainish cycle is a work of genius, for the simple reason that it creates a mythical culture and universe (The Ekumen, and Hain), and then introduces it to us by contrasting it to the various alien cultures it interacts with.  The planet and cultures of Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile and The word for world is Forest  are all very different, and we get to view them in contrast to the equally foreign Hainish culture. 

And The Left Hand of Darkness…. pure GENIUS!  Not only does it contain some beautiful examples of soft science fiction and exploding cultural norms, but it introduces us to in essence two local cultures (Karhide and Orgoreyn) and we watch as the protagonist, the Hainish Envoy Genly Ai, tries to make sense of them with reference to his own understanding of life from the Ekumen and Hainish life. 

Le Guin doesn’t just teach us about foreign/alien cultures, she makes us examine what make us who we are, but comparing it to who others are. 

And she writes a pretty good book too!

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(Seriously.  Some of those kids need a helping hand.)

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I loved Enid Blyton books, especially for the fact that they were age appropriate.  The Secret Seven books are aimed at a younger audience, and once you “outgrow” these, there are the Famous Five books to start on.  All the way from Noddy and the Faraway tree to young adult mysteries, these were firm favourites for all ages.

Did anyone else out there actually read Enid Blyton?

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