Dramatic Irony
“Dramatic irony” is a literary term that applies specifically the ironic circumstances posed when the audience is aware of information that one or more characters in a story are not. In this case, almost the entire narrative is written as a dramatic irony since right up until the very end, the reader knows that Horton is neither crazy nor lying about the existence of the Who civilization on the little speck of dust. That the other characters in the story are not privy to this reality creates and sustains the dramatic irony that is the engine of the storytelling.
That’s Horton. The elephant?
The same fundamental irony that makes Horton’s adventure hatching an egg comical also applies here. Horton, remember, is the largest animal in the jungle. Not just tall, but wide and heavy and although the perspective has changed over the decades as we’ve gotten to understand elephants better, even today but especially back when it was written, elephants were conventionally viewed as rather ungainly animal In other, Horton belongs to a species that is the single most ironic one imaginable to be charged with delicately handling the peculiar existential crisis in which every Who in Who-Ville find themselves.
That’s Horton HEARS a Who!
One aspect of being an elephant that comes in handy and without irony is that while they may be somewhat lumbering in movement because of their immense size, they are also blessed with the biggest ears in the jungle because of that very same size. So, on the flip side, an elephant is the really the best possible choice to arrive at knowledge of the existence of the infinitesimal Whos. That being said, the peculiar circumstance in which Horton arrives at this awareness is juiced with some irony. Horton actually first hears a Who—a sound so soft and slight that is eludes the ability of other animals to hear—while splashing around in the middle of the day in a natural pool of water. That’s some pretty hearing, boy!
The Cure is Worse
A fairly common use of the common vernacular that is used to describe a situation fraught with many levels of potential irony is the idea of “the cure being worse than the disease.” This need not be applied literally to treating illnesses, of course. Primarily as a result of being ramped up by the propaganda of the kangaroos and the Wickersham monkey clan, the jungle collective have reached the perhaps logical but hardly irrefutable conclusion that Horton’s attention to the speck of dust and his insistence it is home to an entire population of unknown species no one has seen and only Horton has heard demands punishment. Not just punishment, but perhaps punishment to the degree of boiling the offending speck of dust “in a hot steaming kettle of Beezle-Nut oil.” In this particular instance, the potential ironic dimension of the cure reaches a level of being exponentially worse than the disease that Horton—notably—isn’t even suffering.
A Shirker Named Jo-Jo
The effort that Horton and those in Who-Ville have made throughout is to prove to the rest of the jungle that Horton is neither lying nor crazy and that the Whos really do exist. As their very civilization depends upon it to keep it from fizzling out into the steam of boiling oil, all the Whos make as loud a racket as possible to produce a loud enough noise to be heard by any jungle animal not equipped with the enormous ears of Horton. Even this is a failure until it is discovered that one—just one of the smallest Whos of all—has been shirking his duty. Ironically, the Whos are only ultimately saved the addition of the tiniest sound made by the tiniest member of the population.
