AP Lang — irony, satire and tone

Irony and satire are among the hardest things to read on the AP English Language and Composition Exam, because the writer means something other than, or even the opposite of, what the words say. Reading questions on older and satirical passages ask what a writer is really criticizing, what an exaggeration or an understatement accomplishes, and how the tone changes as a passage moves. This material trains you to hear the gap between what is said and what is meant, and to name the device that creates it.

The quiz has twelve questions. Two use a public-domain excerpt from Frederick Douglass's July 5, 1852 address, in which he says that "scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed" and then turns every symbol of national pride into its moral opposite. Three use Mark Twain's 1876 after-dinner speech on New England weather, published in 1910: deadpan hyperbole about poets who praise "Beautiful Spring," weather personified as a restless tradesman, and a parody forecast so hedged that it predicts nothing. Two questions work on an original satirical column in which a city honors its potholes with brass plaques instead of filling them: what the writer is really criticizing, and why the column's dignified final sentence is ironic. One original paragraph about a town pool that did not open asks you to trace a shift from affectionate nostalgia to pointed criticism. The remaining questions check the distinctions students often blur: situational versus verbal and dramatic irony, understatement versus hyperbole, Horatian versus Juvenalian satire, and metonymy versus synecdoche.

Each explanation quotes the words that create the effect and names what each wrong choice would wrongly assume about the writer.

The flashcards define the kinds of irony, satire and its two traditional modes, sarcasm, hyperbole, understatement, deadpan, personification, metonymy and synecdoche, the difference between tone and mood, and a simple way to describe a tone shift in your own analysis.

The material offers a multiple-choice quiz and flashcards. It is independent practice based on the published course framework and is not produced or endorsed by the College Board.

  • Recognize verbal, situational and dramatic irony and explain their effect
  • Identify the real target of a satirical text and distinguish Horatian from Juvenalian satire
  • Explain the effect of hyperbole, understatement, deadpan and personification
  • Describe a shift in tone and locate where it happens
  • Distinguish metonymy from synecdoche and other figures of speech

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the College Board's AP English Language and Composition Course and Exam Description (skill category 7: style, including irony and tone). Passages are public-domain excerpts from Frederick Douglass's address of July 5, 1852 (as printed in My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855) and Mark Twain's 1876 speech on New England weather (Mark Twain's Speeches, 1910), plus original columns.

Sample question

Frederick Douglass spoke these words in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, in an address on the meaning of Independence Day to the enslaved. Read the excerpt. "What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition! They that can, may! I cannot. The time for such argument is past. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would to-day pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour." The list beginning "To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license" works chiefly through which strategy?

See the answer

A series of inversions that recasts each object of national pride as its moral opposite

Each item names something the nation prides itself on (the celebration, liberty, greatness, rejoicing, sermons) and renames it as its opposite (a sham, license, vanity, emptiness, hypocrisy). The repeated inversions carry the "scorching irony" the speaker calls for. The list is not chronological, contains no statistics, and is the opposite of gentle understatement.

← English Language and Composition

↑ AP