What is irony? Webster’s Dictionary offers two definitions:

1. The use of words to express the opposite of what one really means.
2. Incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result.

The first definition we sometimes think of as sarcasm (although not all irony is sarcastic); the second definition is how we often use the word colloquially, or in everyday life. In literature, however, irony has a special meaning, closer to the first definition than the second.

When an author wants to distinguish her ideas from that of her characters, she will use dramatic irony. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, dramatic irony occurs when “an audience knows more about a character’s situation than a character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character’s expectations, and thus assigning a sharply different sense to some of the character’s own statements.” Such a character is sometimes called an unreliable or naive narrator. Dramatic irony is often used in satire, a genre of writing that makes fun of or mocks individuals, institutions, and society. Huck Finn, as you know, is definitely a satire.

Just as we can’t always tell if someone is being sarcastic, we can’t always tell if an author is being ironic. But just as with our friends, family, and teachers, the more we know about an author, the easier it becomes to tell when she is being ironic or not. Although it may sometimes seem like authors are being needlessly confusing when they use irony, they actually mean for us as readers to feel smarter; after all, we know more about the characters in the book than the characters themselves.

Irony abounds in Huck Finn. Indeed, English professor and Mark Twain scholar Shelly Fisher Fishkin argues that Twain’s use of irony is the key to understanding the novel:

It is impossible to read Huck Finn intelligently without understanding that Mark Twain’s consciousness and awareness is larger than that of any of the characters in the novel, including Huck. Indeed, part of what makes the book so effective is the fact that Huck is too innocent and ignorant to understand what’s wrong with his society and what’s right about his own transgressive behavior. Twain, on the other hand, knows the score.