The Three Musketeers: Irony 12 key examples

The idea that d'Artagnan served an entire apprenticeship in one day is both hyperbolic and ironic. D'Artagnan is naive and really seems to believe that he has learned enough in one day to make him fit for this duel. It is probably an exaggeration to say that he thinks he completed a full apprenticeship, but the hyperbole gives the reader a sense of his overconfidence. Meanwhile, by stating that he "had served his apprenticeship the day before," Dumas highlights the opposite to the reader: d'Artagnan is woefully inexperienced. He has no idea, for instance, that Bernajoux is a renowned swordsman.

Funnily enough, this naivety serves him well in some ways. He does not know enough to be intimidated by Bernajoux's tactics, and sheer bravery helps him do remarkably well in the duel. This moment goes to show that d'Artagnan has a real knack for the work the musketeers do. At the same time, he is clearly not ready yet to serve alongside them as an equal. The "honorable" duel he fights with Bernajoux turns into a full-on brawl with the other musketeers he has offended. He is clearly in over his head and needs to adjust to the way class, status, and skill operate in Paris. Eventually, with a real apprenticeship, d'Artagnan promises to be a great musketeer. But as of now, his overconfidence is still getting him into trouble.

Having seen d'Artagnan at what he thinks is the time when someone passed a nefarious message at the Louvre, Monsieur de Tréville will now be able to clear the young man from any suspicion of involvement. Because he doesn't realize that d'Artagnan set his clock back, he will not even be lying when he provides the alibi. D'Artagnan is acting clever here, and he knows it. La Porte suggested finding a friend with a slow clock to provide his alibi, but d'Artagnan improves on this plan. Not only is Monsieur de Tréville a trusted and powerful man, but he is also most likely confident that his clock is not slow. D'Artagnan makes double sure of this when he goes back for his cane and resets the hands on the clock so no one will realize in the morning that they had been tampered with.

This is the second instance in the chapter when d'Artagnan cleverly uses dramatic irony to his advantage. He also failed to let the police know that his rooms were right over the "mousetrap" they constructed in Monsieur Bonacieux's quarters, and he was able to spy on all the interviews they conducted there. At the same time, d'Artagnan should not be too self-congratulatory. At the same time as he is using dramatic irony to his advantage with so many others, Madame Bonacieux is also using dramatic irony to her advantage with him. He is so struck by her beauty that he is willing to help her without knowing what he is involving himself with. His "act-first, think later" attitude toward women repeatedly gets him into difficult situations, and this is an early example of it.

According to Dumas's description, Séguier entered the monastery after a "stormy youth" with the hopes of reforming. The monks are unsuccessful in reforming him. Dumas jokingly describes Séguier's failure to suppress his sexuality and the monks' fatigue as they try and fail, day and night, to exorcise him. Dumas even suggests that Séguier got a perverse enjoyment out of the monks' violent exorcisms, to the point that he started calling for their "help" at more and more frequent intervals. In this passage, Dumas states that no one knows whether the demon or the monks gave up first. Given how stubborn the "demon" seems to have been, there is a strong tongue-in-cheek implication that the monks kicked him out of the monastery unreformed so that they could finally get some rest.

The bawdy comedy of this entire backstory serves to make Séguier look bad. If he is really still possessed by a demon (or at the very least unable to temper his own desires), Dumas imagines that his readers will see him as terribly unfit to hold a position of power. And yet, ironically, as soon as he leaves the monastery, he immediately takes advantage of his family connections to become "presiding magistrate of the High Court." He now works directly for the cardinal. Dumas was writing in the 1840s, about half a century after the Ancien Régime in France was replaced by a republican government and a more democratic social hierarchy. There were still debates going on about the best form of government. Dumas satirizes the way the old system gave power to people solely on the basis of their families, regardless of the fact that many of these people were utterly unfit to wield such power.

The cardinal gave the money to Monsieur Bonacieux as a reward for spying on his wife and the queen. There is a game of cat and mouse going on here. The reason the queen needs the diamond tags back from the Duke of Buckingham is that the cardinal is trying to set her up to be publicly shamed for infidelity. The king originally gave her a set of 12 diamond tags, which she in turn gave to the Duke of Buckingham as a token of her love. The cardinal knows this and has suggested that the king throw a ball and request that the queen wear the tags. Monsieur Bonacieux, whose wife works for the queen, has informed the cardinal (in return for payment) that the queen is trying to get the Duke of Buckingham to give the tags back in time for the ball. The cardinal has hatched a plan to stop this from happening.

D'Artagnan, who is Monsieur Bonacieux's tenant, has overheard the conversation between him and the cardinal. He is eager to help Madame Bonacieux and the queen by making sure the Duke of Buckingham gets the message and by bringing the diamond tags back himself. Whereas Milady later becomes the primary villain of the novel, the cardinal is the main antagonist at this point. D'Artagnan finds it deliciously ironic that his journey to England will be financed by the cardinal himself. Ultimately, the cardinal's decision to pay Monsiuer Bonacieux to spy on his wife is what leads to his own downfall.

Conveniently for d'Artagnan, the letter Count de Wardes was bringing to the harbor master was an order from the cardinal to allow him to travel, even though the cardinal has ordered the harbor closed for everyone else. Handing this letter to the harbor master, who has never seen d'Artagnan or Count de Wardes in person, gives d'Artagnan the appearance of being in league with the cardinal. When he tells the harbor master, "The cardinal has great confidence in me," he has his tongue in his cheek; he is not lying exactly, but by neglecting to specify that the cardinal has great confidence in him to cause trouble, he lets the harbor master believe that the cardinal has instead trusted him with official business. When he states that he "know[s] [d'Artagnan] very well," he is likewise leading the harbor master in the opposite direction to what he really means. D'Artagnan does in fact know himself very well, but his phrasing drives the harbor master further away from suspecting that he is speaking to d'Artagnan himself.

D'Artagnan's indulgence in verbal irony demonstrates that he is having fun with this subterfuge. Not only does he use dramatic irony to his own advantage in this scene, but he also congratulates himself on his cleverness. While it may not seem very honorable for d'Artagnan to lie about his identity to the harbor master, he does so in service of a greater mission to help the queen and thwart the corrupt cardinal. His cleverness in carrying out that mission functions in the world of the novel as its own kind of honor.

Porthos has wheedled himself a dinner invitation in the hopes of getting Madame Coquenard to let him into the legendary and mysterious trunk that supposedly contains her husband's fortune. He is also looking forward to a home-cooked feast. As he sits through dinner, which Monsieur Coquenard seems genuinely to enjoy, it becomes clear that he might have been trying too hard to make it to the Coquenards' dinner table. The food is, to put it bluntly, terrible. When the soup comes out, it has no meat, vegetables, or even hearty broth to speak of. All that appears to be in it are measly crusts of bread that float in the watery liquid "like the widely scattered islands of an archipelago." A single bowl hardly has room for many "widely scattered" crusts of bread, so there can't even be much in the way of bread in the soup. It is easy to imagine what crusts there are growing more soggy by the moment.

The simile conjures the idea of exploring the globe in search of riches, a popular form of speculation in the 17th century. Exploring was a high-risk, high-reward activity. European explorers might happen upon gold mines, but many of them found land that didn't immediately yield much. Porthos has come to the Coquenards' house on an exploratory mission, with high hopes of finding enormous riches. Ironically, what he has found instead is a painfully awkward dinner party with bad food.

Porthos speaks, like d'Artagnan, as if it is obvious that the musketeers will simply break their young friend out of the Bastille if he finds himself there. The difference is that Porthos is implicitly making the opposite point: d'Artagnan is showing himself to be extremely naive by taking the possible consequences of a trap so lightly. Porthos is a good friend, but he does not want to be on the hook for saving d'Artagnan from his own careless mistakes. He makes a pointed understatement about the difficulty d'Artagnan is asking all of them to face by remarking that "since we're supposed to leave day after tomorrow, you'd better not take that chance." It is not only that it might take more than a day to stage a rescue. Moreover, the musketeers could face enormous consequences for breaking into the Bastille. They may even be executed if they are caught.

No one, including d'Artagnan, acknowledges Porthos's verbal irony, and the conversation moves on. Porthos does not seem too angry at d'Artagnan for his entitled assumption. Rather, he is serving his regular role as comic relief, rolling his eyes at d'Artagnan's youthful overconfidence and inviting the reader to do the same.

D'Artagnan is the only one who understands Athos's "somber smile" because he is the only one whom Athos has told about his history with Milady. When he discovered the fleur-de-lis on her shoulder (indicating that she was a criminal), he hanged her and ran off. He believed for years that she was dead, until d'Artagnan disclosed to him that he had encountered a murderous woman fitting her description who also had a fleur-de-lis branded on her shoulder. Coming face to face with Milady the night before confirmed at last to Athos that Milady somehow survived his attempt to kill her. When Porthos asks why Athos didn't "drown her, or strangle her, or hang her," d'Artagnan and Athos both know that hanging proved ineffective against this woman. Whereas they may once have believed, as Porthos does, that "dead people are the only ones who never come back," they now know that sometimes dead people (or supposedly dead people, at least) do come back.

The dramatic irony keeps the tension in the narrative building, as the reader continues to wonder when Porthos and Aramis will learn about Athos's history with Milady. Additionally, given the fact that d'Artagnan is in on Athos's secret, it helps build a close, conspiratorial relationship between the two characters. Dumas often describes Athos as a father-figure to d'Artagnan. While Athos is close with Porthos and Aramis, he keeps "family secrets" with the young Gascon.

From the outside, Milady is the image of "a young girl dreaming of the wreath of flowers she would wear at the next village festival." There is a sharp contrast between her "innocent" appearance and the real contents of her dreams, which Dumas shares with the reader at the opening of Chapter 53. The image of "odious blood flowing beneath the headsman's axe" at d'Artagnan's imagined execution is startling to readers. To Milady, it is soothing. It "lulls" her and makes her smile to think of escaping and bringing about d'Artagnan's bloody demise.

Dumas depicts Milady as an especially dangerous villain because she can project such an ironic air of innocence. Over and over throughout her life, she convinces men that she is the "young girl dreaming" that she looks like on the outside. The false sense of security she inspires in them makes them all the more vulnerable to her vicious schemes. Dumas recreates this false sense of security for the reader by presenting the peaceful image of Milady before the chapter break and the terrifying image only after a pause between chapters. She embodies the false dichotomy of innocence and deception that is often projected onto women in literature and media. Her duplicitous villainy keeps the story exciting, but it is important to note that it relies on some troubling stereotypes about women.

From the outside, Milady is the image of "a young girl dreaming of the wreath of flowers she would wear at the next village festival." There is a sharp contrast between her "innocent" appearance and the real contents of her dreams, which Dumas shares with the reader at the opening of Chapter 53. The image of "odious blood flowing beneath the headsman's axe" at d'Artagnan's imagined execution is startling to readers. To Milady, it is soothing. It "lulls" her and makes her smile to think of escaping and bringing about d'Artagnan's bloody demise.

Dumas depicts Milady as an especially dangerous villain because she can project such an ironic air of innocence. Over and over throughout her life, she convinces men that she is the "young girl dreaming" that she looks like on the outside. The false sense of security she inspires in them makes them all the more vulnerable to her vicious schemes. Dumas recreates this false sense of security for the reader by presenting the peaceful image of Milady before the chapter break and the terrifying image only after a pause between chapters. She embodies the false dichotomy of innocence and deception that is often projected onto women in literature and media. Her duplicitous villainy keeps the story exciting, but it is important to note that it relies on some troubling stereotypes about women.

Right after he was stabbed, the duke received a letter from Queen Anne warning him that he was in danger as a result of their affair, over the course of which they have made some very dangerous people angry. It is ironic enough that he receives the warning a moment too late. To make matters worse, the queen warned him before the incident with the diamond tags that they should stop seeing one another. The duke's convincing the queen to continue their relationship and to give him the diamond tags as a token of her love is what has led to Milady and the cardinal's desire for revenge. The duke spends the last seconds of his life trying to find something significant to leave behind for the queen, whom he still loves. The only thing he can find is the bloody knife, which is a horrifying but ironically honest memento of their relationship.

When Buckingham tries and fails to smile, his final thought gets frozen on his face "like a last kiss of love." It is not precisely clear what this thought is, but it has something to do with Queen Anne and the bloody knife. The duke seems to have finally realized that their affair was doomed from the start. And yet he still can't let go of it. The simile comparing his frozen expression to "a last kiss of love" suggests that at the moment of death, the greatest tragedy and the greatest love of his life are all tied up in one another. His stabbing is awful, but it also reinforces his love for the queen by turning their relationship into the overarching story of his life.

The man turns out to be the brother of another man Milady manipulated. That man found himself unwittingly drawn deep into criminal behavior, and he eventually died by suicide. His brother, who also happens to be an executioner, is an old acquaintance of Athos. As a matter of honor, Athos has recruited him to share in the group's revenge against Milady.

Of course, none of the others know this backstory yet. Nor does the reader. However, the musketeers and Lord de Winter trust that Athos knows what he is doing. As for the reader, literary conventions suggest that this man will turn out to be important. For one thing, his mask suggests that at some point, there will be an unmasking. His "big red cloak" suggests that his character is wrapped in both blood and revenge. Indeed, this man ends up beheading Milady in a highly dramatic and disturbing strike of the sword.

The dramatic irony in this moment not only builds suspense, but it also demonstrates the deep sense of camaraderie and brotherhood that is driving the characters onward in their battle against Milady. The original band of "three musketeers" has grown to encompass d'Artagnan and even Lord de Winter. Now, yet another man is joining their ranks. Most of the characters do not even need to know the details of each other's quarrels with Milady to join forces. They are almost startlingly eager to bond with their fellow men over mutual hatred of a woman. The severity of the crimes they know Milady has committed is enough to convince all of them that she has surely committed more atrocities.

The cardinal first gave this note to Milady when she was carrying out nefarious deeds on his behalf. As Dumas reminds the reader here, Athos took the note from her and gave it to d'Artagnan to hold onto. Although the cardinal ends up deciding to burn the note and erase all evidence of it, it is a clever power play for d'Artagnan to hand over the note in this scene. Given Milady's many aliases and need to keep her true identity a secret, the cardinal never specified in writing who "the bearer of this letter" is supposed to be. Technically, d'Artagnan is now the bearer. The note the cardinal first signed to help Milady get away with working against the musketeers is now being thrown back in his face.

D'Artagnan may have been able to use the note more effectively if he had handed it to someone who did know that it was never intended for him. However, giving it to the cardinal allows d'Artagnan to demonstrate that he is crafty. This very display of smarts seems to tip the cardinal's opinion in his favor. Realizing that d'Artagnan might be useful to him in the future, the cardinal chooses to form an alliance with him instead of having him executed.