Dramatic Irony In The Odyssey

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Suspense in stories makes readers’ palms sweaty and keeps them on the edge of their seats for the author to deliver shocking news or just mellow out again until another bout of suspense comes back. Odysseus disguising himself as a peasant or beggar in front of the suitors, his wife, and his son, while the audience knows who he really is, all add dramatic irony for the reader. Homer effectively uses Odysseus’ disguises to create dramatic irony that adds suspense for the reader in The Odyssey. When Odysseus is disguised as a peasant in front of all the suitors, and they are all insulting him, not knowing that he plans on killing them. They were verbally abusing him, saying that he is a “bleary vagabond,” and that there is “no rag of sense is left [in him],” (21. 325). The impending doom of the suitors as they make fun of whom only the reader knows is Odysseus, …show more content…
Odysseus asks his son questions to see what kind of person he has become since Odysseus left, and Telemakhos shows that he is weaker-willed than what Odysseus wanted him to be, sharing that the suitors were taking advantage of him, “eating [his] house up as they court [his] mother,” (16. 146). This adds suspense for the reader waiting to see how the reunion between Telemakhos and his long-lost father, who has been gone for twenty years, goes. In The Odyssey, Homer effectively uses the different disguises of Odysseus to create dramatic irony that adds suspense for the reader. Odysseus meeting his son, reuniting with his wife, and slyly observing the suitors in disguise all leads to dramatic irony for the reader. Although this book is thousands of years old, the situations with dramatic irony and suspense that Homer creates are just as creative and entertaining as books today, and he keeps readers on the edge of their seats until the very

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