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In "A Jury of Her Peers," what is ironic about the method that was used to kill the victim?

Mr. Wright was found dead in his bed with a rope around his neck. As the story unfolds, the irony of the way he died becomes clearer. Three types of irony related to the cause of death are apparent. Situational irony refers to events that are the opposite of what one might expect. Dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows something that a character doesn't know. Verbal irony refers to the use of words to mean the opposite of their literal meaning. 


First, that Mr. Wright would be strangled in his bed with a rope is ironic--unexpected--for several reasons. There was a gun in the home, and anyone who wanted to murder the man could have done so more quickly and easily with the gun. Second, that he didn't wake up while the rope was being put around his neck is unusual. Third, the method of death was like a hanging, a way to administer justice to a wrong-doer, yet the man was murdered, so the one who was administering the "justice" would be the wrong-doer--making for an ironic role reversal of the victim and perpetrator. 


Dramatic irony comes in when the women discover clues that the men--the sheriff and county attorney--don't know about. Readers learn that Minnie Wright was knotting a quilt--drawing a connection with the knot she tied around her husband's neck. The women discover the canary with a broken neck and conclude that Mr. Wright broke the innocent bird's neck, revealing that the method of Wright's execution was poetic--or ironic--justice for his brutality. The act of violence toward the bird represents the larger pattern of abuse that Wright perpetrated on his wife. The murderer killed him by "slipping a thing round his neck that choked the life out of him," but he was guilty in a different way of choking the life out of his wife over a period of twenty years. 


Finally, verbal irony surrounds the method of death. The men mock the women for debating whether Minnie was going to quilt or knot the squares of her quilt together. The innocent knot associated with quilting is ironic when juxtaposed with the deadly hangman's knot around Mr. Wright's neck. 

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