Dramatic irony is a literary device in which the audience possesses information that the characters do not.
In the excerpt from "A Doll's House," by Henrik Ibsen, Nora pretends to be nervous about her dance at the party so that Helmer does not read Krogstad's letter in the mailbox. A feeling of tension is developed because the letter reveals unknown information to Helmer about how Nora forged her father's signature to obtain money for her husband's health treatment in Italy.
Answer:
The soldiers consider him arrogant and cowardly. He boasts about his bravery, telling the soldiers the story of his escape from the Spaniards. During a scrimmage, he found himself in enemy lines and, thinking quickly, removed his white scarf (a mark of his French military rank) to blend in with the crowd and get away.
Answer:
Explanation:
In Walden, one of the many Transcendental concepts Thoreau expressed is the idea that God does not exist in some far away place, but lives instead all around us. "Heaven," he wrote, "is under our feet as well as over our heads." As a Transcendentalist, Thoreau believed that God manifests Himself in the natural world; therefore, nature lives as the source of spiritual truth for those who will seek it there. The poem's persona is one such person.
After listening to the astronomer analyze and "explain" the universe with his charts, diagrams, and mathematical formulas, the poem's speaker becomes "tired and sick." He leaves the stifling atmosphere of the confining lecture room and goes out into "the mystical moist night air."
The influence of Transcendental philosophy can be seen in the contrast between the attitudes and values of the lecturer and those of the poem's speaker. The astronomer intellectualizes nature, perhaps even brilliantly. He is very intelligent, but he is not wise. He understands facts, but he misses truth. The poem's speaker, however, understands that the truth of the universe, of nature itself, can only be understood spiritually. Rejecting the astronomer's carefully reasoned "proofs," he seeks truth instead by "[looking] up in perfect silence at the stars."
--Enotes
