The Poetic Devices in Alanis Morsiette’s "ironic"

“Ironic”

Alanis Morissette is a free verse poet. A perfect example of her writing style is her lyrical free verse poem, “Ironic”. The tone of the speaker in her poem is one the expresses some type of unpleasant emotion, usually frustration. Also she tends to use metaphors to get her point across more than anything else. The metaphors are typically right to the point; they do not usually require excessive thought. She also does not have a rhyme scheme in her poem; she seems to focus mainly of repetition.

The speaker of this poem is a person who seems to have an abundance of life experience. She is also frustrated with the things in life that never go right even though it appears that they should.

The theme of this poem is the misfortunes in life, the things that just never seem to go right even though they seem like they should. By naming it “ironic” it shows the life themes. Everything in this poem is some sort of contrast.

“It’s like rain on your wedding day”

That is a perfect life contrast because it is the common thought that it rains during a funeral not a wedding, therefore saying that the wedding is doomed form the beginning. The audience for this poem is the entire world, and the speaker is someone who has lived life and understands the way things work. It is the world’s life story, the common things that are so easy to understand that no one gets them. Her repetition in this poem is her use of “It’s” in the first stanza, the last stanza and the chorus, and her saying “life has a funny way” is used repeatedly in the third stanza and the last stanza. This lyrical free verse poem opens by telling the stories of a ninety-eight year old man who wins the lottery and dies the next day and a man who was afraid to fly, then dies on a plane crash. The speaker uses them to show how sometimes life can be tragically “Ironic”. All the comparisons in this lyrical poem are negative. There is never a bad situation happening, and then something good happens, it is always something good happening then it goes wrong like the rain on the wedding day.

“It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay

It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late”

The speaker is saying that everything that is wrong in life is right there to be seen. She is showing the world how obvious the issues are. There are hidden problem, but once they make themselves clear to the reader then realizes they had been there all along. She makes that clear at the closing of the poem, “Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you Life has a funny way of helping you out” All the speaker of this poem wants