Literature allows people to experience and learn life's lessons through text. Irony is one of the most commonly used literary devices. Irony can be defined as the difference between appearance and reality, or when a reader expects or assumes one thing and the opposite is true. This allows an author to engage and surprise the audience, which often also teaches an important lesson. Two classic examples of irony throughout 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's knowledge of something the character does not know. Throughout this play, Oedipus is searching for his identity, the answers to his questions are visible at all times to the audience, but not to Oedipus. The knowledge of his true fate also allows the audience to see the mistakes he made since his blindness to the signs that foreshadow his demise. At the beginning of the first act, the citizens of Thebes implore their king for help in eliminating the plague that is attacking the city. Creon, Oedipus' brother-in-law, arrives with news from the Oracle that, to end 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 have come true because they had abandoned their child to die. This news begins to haunt Oedipus, who was told by an oracle as a child that he would kill his father and marry his mother. At the end of the play, Oedipus lit up in the middle of a sheet of paper and shuddered. Life could be long. When Mrs. Mallard saw her very undead husband walk through the door, all the freedom it gave her she had thought was gone and with it her life too. For doctors, it was her extreme happiness that her beloved husband was still alive that stopped her heart, but readers know it was her last breath of freedom that cost her life. His death at the end, when she sees that he is still alive, constitutes the decisive turning point in the ironic tale (Chopin). Irony, that incongruity between what is expected and what actually happens, is the technique writers use to engage and surprise their audiences. 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 and teach a lesson. This shows that irony transcends time and culture to become a universal theme..