Chapter 6: Dramatic Irony

          In chapter six of Slaughterhouse Five there is a weird kind of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when the reader understands or knows something that a character or the characters do not. This type of irony what brought to my attention when an Englishmen was describing to the American prisoners where they will moving to next, “You needn’t worry about the bombs, by the way, Dresden is an open city. It is undefended, and contains no war industries or troop concentrations of any importance.” It was stated in the beginning of the book that Dresden would be bombed, and Billy has made multiple references of knowing that in the future Dresden would be bombed. However, why I said it was a weird kind of dramatic irony is because to me I have always felt that reader was to know more than the main character and other character. Instead, it seems to me that no one would expect the reader and the main character to know what is going to happen to Dresden. The passage, “Billy, with his memories of the future, knew that the city [Dresden] would be smashed to smithereens and then burned-in about thirty days. He knew, too, that most of the people watching him would soon be dead. So it goes” (Vonnegut150). So in my eyes I feel as if this dramatic irony is interesting because no one else, not the Englishmen, the other American soldiers, or the citizens of Dresden knew about the bombing; just the reader and Billy Pilgrim.