Kalki makes use of three different kinds of irony in his short story, The Tiger King. This is done intentionally to expose the deficiencies, weaknesses, and hypocrisy in the Maharaja's character. Satire as a genre makes liberal use of irony to highlight important social issues subtly.
Kalki uses three types of irony in his short story verbal, dramatic, and situational. The most common of all is verbal irony.
Verbal irony might be defined as an expression that means the opposite of what is being expressed. In the third paragraph, the author writes, 'Everyone who reads of him will experience the natural desire to meet a man of his indomitable courage.' The words, 'indomitable courage' are ironic in that the Maharaja, far from being courageous, was so scared of the astrologer's predictions being proved right that he wanted to pre-empt the prophecy by exterminating the tigers that threatened his life.
Dramatic irony can be defined as an expression that highlights the fact that the character or the actor is not aware of the outcome of an event but the audience or the reader is. The first paragraph of section III reads, 'From that day onwards it was celebration time for all the tigers inhabiting Pratibandapuram.' Little do they know that they are going to be exterminated in totality by none other than the Tiger King himself! The reader knows that the tigers have no reason to celebrate, rather they need to be prepared to die. In fact, the third paragraph in the third section of the story states, 'Initially the king seemed well set to realize his ambition', meaning that by then, a large number of tigers in the state had already been exterminated by the Tiger King, himself! Another interesting example of the use of dramatic irony in the story is when the Tiger King takes aim at what he thinks is his final tiger, he fires at it, it falls and he leaves, happy that he has finally defeated fate. He states, " I have killed my hundredth tiger. My vow has been fulfilled."- little did he know that his bullet had missed its target and that the tiger was quite alive, dazed by the loud report of the gun, but quite alive! But then, the reader and the hunters know better!
The third type of irony used by Kalki in his short story, The Tiger King is that of situational Irony. Situational irony can be defined as dealing with a situation that has an unexpected outcome. One example is when the Tiger King's arm gets infected by a splinter from a wooden tiger and three surgeons are brought from Madras who operate on him. The outcome of the operation is that the Maharaja 'is dead'. The outcome of the operation was not to cure the Maharaja but to kill him.
One must agree that the entire lesson is built upon irony. The very manner of the Marharaja's death is ironical, the lesson ends on an ironical note when the writer concludes, 'In this manner, the hundredth tiger took its final revenge upon the Tiger King.'
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