Literature allows people to experience and learn life lessons through text. One of the most commonly used literary devices is irony. Irony can be defined as the difference between appearance and reality, or when a reader expects or assumes one thing to be true and the opposite. It allows an author to engage and surprise the audience, which often also teaches an important lesson. Two classic examples of irony through literature are Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour. In the play Oedipus the King, Sophocles uses dramatic irony for the moral and political education of society. Dramatic irony depends on the audience knowing something the character doesn't know. Throughout the play Oedipus is searching for his identity, the answers to his questions are visible to the audience throughout, but not to Oedipus. Knowing his true fate also allows the audience to see the mistakes made by his blindness to the signs that predict his death. At the beginning of the first act, the citizens of Thebes beg their king to help them eradicate the plague that is attacking the city. Creon, Oedipus' brother-in-law, arrives with the news from the Oracle that to stop the plague they must solve the murder of Laius, the king before Oedipus. Then summoned by King Tiresias, the blind prophet accuses Oedipus himself of the murders. Jocasta, the queen, tells him to ignore the prophecies. She then stated that she was once told that her son would kill Laius, which could never come true because they abandoned their son to die. This news begins to haunt Oedipus, who was told by an oracle when he was a boy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. At the end of the work Oedipus l... in the center of the card ...... struggles with a shiver life could be long. When Mrs. Mallard saw her undead husband walk through the door, all the freedom she had thought was now gone and with it her life. To doctors, her extreme happiness that her beloved husband was still alive was what stopped her heart, but readers know that it was her last breath of freedom that took her life. His death at the end, when she sees that he is still alive, is the turning point in the ironic tale (Chopin). Irony, that inconsistency between what is expected and what actually happens, is the technique used by writers to engage and surprise the audience. as well as opening them up to new ideas. Oedipus the King and The Story of an Hour are two completely different stories that use irony to develop the plot while teaching a lesson. This proves that irony transcends time and culture to be a universal theme.