Question

Read the excerpt from "the lottery." the children assembled first, of course. school was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play, and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. what information from the excerpt is ironic?

Answer 1

The children arrive first for the lottery.

Hope that helps :)

Answer 2

The answer is: the children assembled first, of course.

Irony is a literary device of a very complicated nature. However, it could be summarized in rough terms as a technique that describes an event that, in appearance, seems to be the common sense case, but in reality it is not usually the fact of the matter.

In this case, children assembling first, though we are told that, of course they were the first to do so, is not usually the case when thinking of children and order, since usually it would be the teachers or some sort of authority figures who would normally first assembled and then gathered the children.