Irony Essay Boot Camp Essay JC

The Gospel According To Mark
By Jorge Luis Borges

In “The Gospel According To Mark”, by Jorge Luis Borges the author tries to convey irony through the subtext. The way the he uses irony to write his short story is by demonstrating how the character shows sarcasm for the things he most wants, uses religion to set a tone of complete irony, and also he uses elevated language in order to show his readers how the irony can be seen in the text.
In the short story the man says, “His wide intelligence was undirected; at the age of thirty-three, he still had not qualified for graduation in the subject to which he was most drawn.” In this quote the narrator explains house something is not done and not by will he shows the audience how the tone of sarcasm is used. By saying that he has not yet completed something he loves at the age of thirty-three not because of lack of effort but maybe through incapacity. It shows ironic because when someone is drawn towards something especially a topic of study usually they end up doing excellent in such things, however not for this character he seems to have failed to complete something he wants dearly. Even though the man has a great range of intelligence it is ironic that he cannot seem achieve this task, it’s a ironic that he’s so qualified however is a total failure.
Another aspect that the narrator uses to show irony in the text is through religion and his doubtfulness in it. He uses irony to show how he does not believe that everyone is saved when they should be damned. “What hell? A place under the ground where souls burn and burn. And the roman soldiers who hammered in the nails, where they saved too?” Through this quote the narrator tries to demonstrate irony through religion because he puts a tone of sarcasm on how someone how has created such evils against Jesus or onto anyone can be saved. When they speak of nails they are using this symbolism to date it back towards the time of Jesus in the A.D. The irony that is used is how can someone be forgiven when they have caused so much evil in the world? He does not believe in hell, the narrator so he wants to convey his irony on how even the evilest of all evil can be saved.
The author uses elevated language in order to really show his audience that he is using irony throughout his short essay. The author uses words such as inevitable or paternity in order to show the audience how his language in the story helps the author convey irony through the text. The words inevitable is used to talk about a dinner gap that had been occurring in the story and the word paternity was being used to talk about the unknowing of whom a son or daughter might be from. This showed how irony was used in the text.