Question

In at least two hundred words, explain how the ending of the story is an example of situational irony.

Answer 1

The facts that are told at the end of the story are in sharp contrast to those that unleash the tragedy that Desiree and her son have to live. Only in the last few lines we discover that her husband knows the true cause of the dark color of the child's skin, which derives from the color of his own mother and has nothing to do with the unknown facts that cover the real origin of Desiree, since his filiation was not known from the beggining.

The irony is graphed in the fact that Desiree's husband could not have ignored that his mother was a dark-skinned woman, as he lived with her for the first eight years of his life and in addition to that, in the end, we also got to know that he was in possession of that letter that informed him the truth, in the probably event that he had forgotten it over the years.

The mistreatment he gave to his slaves was then the most important contradiction, although we can observe that his character softens after the birth of his son, even so having to see him daily was probably a permanent reminder of a shame he was trying to leave behind.

Answer 2

The ending of the story is an example of situational irony because the outcome is very different from what it appeared to be initially. Since Desiree knows nothing about her ancestry, everyone assumes that she has some African ancestry. Even the reader is convinced that this is probably the case. However, the irony is that the person who actually has African ancestry is her husband, not Desiree, and that this is the reason why their baby is dark-skinned.