In the given epigraphs, Percival Everett had said that ‘real irony is far more sincere than earnestness’
The definition of irony, taken in range and source and sifted down, equaits to an outcome or appearance contrary to expectation. The Bedford Glossary offers the etymology of irony with an anecdote from Greek drama, in which a weaker character defeats their braggart opponent through misrepresentation. Misrepresentation, misinterpretation, miscalculation. This is what irony is; from the Greek, it is eiron, it is the ‘dissembling’ of a social situation, often comical, in drama, stressful. So why associate it with earnestness, which includes the word ‘serious’ as description in two out of three definitions?
Perhaps because what one expects is often a window to the way they think.
Earnestness is typically associated with the urgent, with something that needs to be said, and said in great passion, as a confession of love, or a warning of present danger. Irony takes those confessions and admonitions and flips them on their heads: a misinterpretation of something harmless as something deadly, a character singing songs of passion to the wrong love interest they’ll end up with in the end. And yet, irony is something so much more than the tension of knowing that a character is travelling in the wrong direction, whether that be for dramatic effect, or comedic.
Irony is people seeing what they want to see, it is the expectation of reality to be glossed in the rosen tint of their imagination. This is where it opens the window to another mind. Knowing what someone had expected for themself can tell you about what they think of themselves, or imagine they deserve. A character with a secret admirer may imagine them to be one they know, or one whose beauty they can fawn, or as a trap to poke fun at them. If they were to assume their admirer to be someone they know, it may be because they admire that person enough to hope that it is them, whereas they may automatically assume the admirer’s beauty or lack thereof based on their own self image, or who they think they could be worth. The character may ignore logical signs as to whose fancy they’ve captured because they want it to be someone else, which gives the audience insight into a desire the character may not have otherwise expressed, as people may not otherwise express.
Earnestness, however, finds its limit in someone’s willingness to offer their emotions to other people. Not many would care to show just how much they care. Earnestness and honesty, because of such a general lack of willingness to show the depth of yourself in everyday situations, can often make real attempts to convey the way you feel, feel less genuine than if they had tried to hide it through a joke. People aren’t accustomed to earnestness as something separate from urgentness. Earnestness can come across as an excuse, or a plea, when irony has a higher chance of coming off as a genuine mistake. Earnestness carries the expectation that others will take a situation as seriously as you would take it. In embarrassing situations, this is particularly difficult for others not to see the humor in whatever is described.
Everett, in his explanation, claimed that ‘to accept the absurdity of a situation is to accept the humanness of it’. He goes on to argue that accepting sincerity implies that someone believes they know all there is to know about the given situation. Yet this doesn’t always have to be so. Accepting the sincere in the earnest can suggest an expansion of empathy, an understanding akin to the kind in irony, yet deeper run because it can connect two individuals to each other’s lives and minds rather than offering a general connection to all of humanity, which can feel too grand a concept to comprehend. In a way, acknowledging the absurd to draw us together is equally as pretentious as pretending to understand something. This approach to irony can be a cliche in thought, imagining that you are recognising all of mankind in an action or event, regardless of whether you truly are, it can even signify narcissism if the person making the acknowledgement is separating themselves from the situation to do so.
That’s what irony does, disassembles situations, takes consciousness outside of the literal event and makes you see something more. It’s the laughter that escapes your lips before you realise why, after everything that could have possibly went wrong did just that and the only thing left is a universal truth that earnestness could never bring to life in the same way. Irony brings the sincerity of mistake, in the way that earnestness is the sincerity in the desperate wanting another person to understand the way they feel, the way they think, and the emotion that can’t remain within them. It is forced, where irony comes naturally to a situation, and thus creates the chance to empathize and find the greater truth where you wouldn’t have otherwise looked.