I'm at the end. Now what?

The ending of the book made Mr. Yang Sun look even more scandalous than he had before. They are not getting for love Mr. Yang Sun wants to be able to get the money that he can get from being with her rather than marrying her because he loves her so much. She’s naïve at one point thinking that he loves her so much and is marrying her because of that. Everyone seems to know what he’s marrying her for. His own mother is telling him that he shouldn’t marry her if she won’t sell the tobacco shop for him. From one source I read, it talked about satire using irony as an instrument for getting the point of the satire across (Blackwell Reference Online). If this is the case, then I think irony of the way the play ends could be a type of satire if I understand correctly. The fact that the play ends kinda in the middle of things and the problem isn’t really resolved could be situational irony because the play ended the opposite of the way I expected. I expected there to be a conclusion to the ending of the situation.

From talking about satire and irony in class, I think I have a little bit of a clearer idea of what it really is. I know that I still have trouble detecting both because I struggle with tone and have always done so since middle school. Maybe the fact that I can’t pick up tone contributes to the fact that I have trouble with reading comprehension, which is linked to why I have trouble finding the satire in the play that we are reading. Also, I was having trouble understanding whether or not the whole play was a satire of something or if individual parts of the play made the play considered a satire or containing satire. Tracy brought this up in class as well. I was confused about whether or not we really need to try to see the whole play as a satire or read the play as a normal play and see if we detect satire in the individual parts of the play. As a whole, this play has definitely been a challenge for me. Even now that we’ve finished the play I still don’t think I understand the satire. Does anyone else get it???

Pavlovskis-Petit, Zoja. "26. Irony and Satire : A Companion to Satire: Ancient and

Modern : Blackwell Reference Online." Blackwell Reference Online: Home. Web. 19 Apr. 2010. .

Brecht, Bertolt, and Eric Bentley. The Good Woman of Setzuan. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1999. Print.