Ironic Echo / Literature

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• An almost instantaneous example: in 1633, the sequel to 1632, after Joachim von Thierbach has gone halfway around the room pointing out all the people whose lives have been ruined by mercenary soldiers, he begins to wrap up his remarks:
  Joachim: Such is the piety of aristocracy, King and Chancellor. Such is what — nothing more — all of your fine distinctions between Lutheran and Calvinist and Catholic come to in the end. Which nobleman gets to plunder and abuse which commoner at his convenience.
  Oxenstierna: Enough!
  Joachim: Yes, indeed, Chancellor. Precisely my point. Enough.
• In The Aeneid: Aeneas is frequently referred to as "pius Aeneas" (roughly, "righteous"). He ironically echoes this in his remorse after killing young Lausus: "What will righteous Aeneas give to you?"
• The Alice Network:
  • The words, said unthinkingly in English, that blew Eve’s cover were “Well, goddamnit.” When Eve has been shot by René and is bleeding out on the floor, she repeats that line, now a severe understatement: “Well, goddamnit.”
  • When in German custody and later when awaiting a surgery, Lili repeats her initial I Need a Freaking Drink line.
    Lili [to the interrogators]: Have you any brandy? It’s been an absolute pisser of a day.
    Lili [to the doctor]: I wonder if I can have some chloroform? Because it’s been an absolute pisser of a day.
• RedJive in Armada always texts "You're welcome" to his opponents after he defeats them. Zack intends to throw this back at him when he eventually defeats him. Instead, RedJive (actually Zack's long lost father) sacrifices himself to save the population of Earth and Zack has "You're welcome" inscribed on a plaque dedicated to him.
• The Assassin Fantastic novel Coin of the Realm is filled with these. For just two examples out of the lot: Princess Rosalind is being forced to marry by her father, who says "Daughters are like coin to be traded". Her husband-to-be, upon meeting her, said simply "Looks like you'll have to do." Later, Adalia repeats this before murdering Lief and claiming her right to become her father's new head assassin and right hand. When he starts protesting with "Daughter..." she interrupts with "Daughters are coin and you gave me away", asserting that this means she can now do as she pleases with her life.
• In Brave New World, the line, "Oh brave new world, that has such people in it," is said more than once, and at first is positive but then becomes more and more ironic.
• In Carnifex, High Admiral Robinson's message recommending that Captain Wallenstein not be elevated to Class One, which she read when he went to sleep without having closed down his computer, described her as being "adequate, but no more than that" as an officer. Later, after Robinson has been captured by Carerra, Carerra allows the High Admiral to talk to Captain Wallenstein on their comm link. Robinson begs her to do anything to get him free, she shuts him down, asking why she would do that for "an adequate officer, but no more than that".
• A Christmas Carol:
  • Early on, Scrooge, when asked to make a charitable donation, snarls back, "Are there no prisons? No workhouses?" Meaning that he feels he already makes a big enough contribution to the poor through his taxes. Later on, when Scrooge starts to have a change of heart he expresses concern over the condition of "Ignorance" and "Want", two skinny, poorly-clad allegorical children who hang around the Ghost of Christmas Present. Upon hearing this, the Ghost of Christmas Present cynically echoes Scrooge's earlier line, "Are there no prisons? No workhouses?"
  • Also, the men asking for donations say that many poor would rather die than go to prison or the poorhouses. Scrooge replies, "If they'd rather die then they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population!" When the Ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge that Tiny Tim could die, he echoes Scrooge's line with, "If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the surplus population!" Ouch. When Scrooge lampshades this, the Ghost acidly points out that no one gave Scrooge the right or power to sit in judgement over who matters or not, and maybe in future he'll think harder about precisely who he's snidely dismissing as the "surplus population" before doing it, because they could be closer to him than he realizes.
  • During the added Ironic Hell scene in the 1970 musical film, Marley mocks Scrooge with "Bah, humbug" as he is chained to a post in an icy office.
• Discworld
  • Death's a catchphrase "There is no justice, there's just me" gets different treatments:
    • He originally meant it in a very cynical sense. At some point, though, as he gained more humanity, he delivers the same line when punishing an evildoer.
    • The phrase's original use in Mort also gets an Ironic Echo of a different sort. Death uses it to describe, realistically enough, how life isn't fair, nor is who gets to live and to die. But in the climax, his adopted daughter Ysabell throws it back at him to say that he's being unfair in condemning Mort for meddling with fate when he himself meddled with Mort and Ysabell's fates: "You're right. There's no justice. There's just you."
    • And the version from Reaper Man.
  Death: Lord, we know there is no good order except that which we create... There is no hope but us. There is no mercy but us. There is no justice.
  There is just us.
  All things that are, are ours. But we must care. For if we do not care, we do not exist. If we do not exist, then there is nothing but blind oblivion.
  And even oblivion must end one day. Lord, will you grant me just a little time? For the proper balance of things. To return what was given.
  For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds.
  Lord, what can the harvest hope for, if not the care of the Reaper Man?
  • In Feet of Clay, the Dragon King Of Arms tells Vimes why his ancestor killing a tyrannical king means his family can't get a coat of arms: "Whatever else he was, he was the king. The crown isn't like a watchman's helmet. Even when you take it off, you're still wearing it." At the end of the book, when the Dragon King questions how "a man married to the richest woman in the city" can see himself as the champion of the common people, Vimes retorts "A watchman's helmet isn't like a crown. Even when you take it off, you're still wearing it."
  • In Night Watch Discworld, Vimes is chasing down Ax-Crazy serial murderer Carcer Dun on the roofs of the Unseen University. When he finally gets Carcer in his grip, the man complains, "You're hurting!" Vimes says no, he's not hurting, he's protecting Carcer, wouldn't want him to fall off. At the end, after Carcer has spent the entire book harrying Vimes and wearing that insipid "what-have-I-done?" grin all over the place, Vimes finally gets him again, and again comes, "You're hurting!" This time, Vimes acknowledges that yes, he is hurting, and he's still doing it by the book; what's more, he's going to make sure everything is done by the book so that Carcer gets a fair trial if it means he has to do every last step of it himself, because a fair trial means a quick execution, and tomorrow's sunrise will shine down all the brighter on Vimes' little son Sam if it's not being shared with Carcer.
  • A variant occurs in Thud!, when the Obstructive Bureaucrat who's come to inspect the Watch asks Vimes Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? or "Who watches the watchmen?", to which Vimes replies 'Me.', and when asked who watches him, his answer 'I do that too. All the time. Believe me.' A boast merely meant to say he doesn't want a paperpusher looking over his shoulder? The Summoning Dark that tried to make Vimes kill several dwarfs finds out the hard way it's not, when it runs into the Guarding Dark, a watchman inside Vimes' mind, who echoes the lines before kicking the Summoning Dark out.
  • Witches Abroad gets its own variant — the echo comes in quick succession and it illustrates a difference in philosophy rather than any malice one way or the other. Lily and Esme Weatherwax both get dragged into a mirror, and each is told that they're not quite dead-they'll be freed from the mirror when they can identify the real "them" out of a legion of mirror images. Lily, who has used paired mirrors to amplify her magic almost all her life, rushes off to find it. Esme, who believes in headology and always being certain of who you are and where you stand, asks if it's a trick question, then gestures to herself and says, "This one."
  • In Carpe Jugulum, the phrase "Everywhere I look, I see something holy" takes on two very different meanings: an Oh, Crap! moment by a vampire whose desensitization training is backfiring horribly, and coming from a nerdy, ineffective Good Shepherd on his way to Badass Preacher-hood.
  • Death again, in Hogfather. Throughout the book, he has been filling in for a missing Captain Ersatz of Santa, but can't get the 'ho ho ho' to sound jolly rather than ominous. At the end, he confronts the Auditors of Reality, who had tried to kill said Santa-figure, and gives a very ominous Ho. Ho. HO. before obliterating them.
  • Unseen Academicals has "It's all Shove!" being used in two different contexts by two different characters to describe life among the Ankh-Morpork working class; first it's used in a fatalistic scene by Andy Shank, then it's used by Trev Likely when he resolves to "get out of the Shove" and make something of himself.
  • At the start of Going Postal, Moist von Lipwig is trying to remove a brick from the prison wall with a spoon. When he finally succeeds in doing so, he finds a new spoon, in front of a much more firmly mortared brick. The guards, who turn out to have been watching the whole thing, say it's important to give prisoners the greatest of all gifts, which is hope. While Moist doesn't say it out loud, his internal monologue repeats the phrase when he considers the cryptographic fun the guards are going to have with his complicated, and entirely fake, Treasure Map.
• The Dresden Files:
  • In Death Masks, Ortega explains he drinks beer, though he doesn't need to, because life is more than survival. Then he offers to call off the duel if Harry becomes a vampire. Harry fishes, establishing that he preys on children, and refuses. He explains that life is more than survival.
  • As another example, in the later novel Dead Beat, Harry's grave marker has written on it "he died doing the right thing". At the beginning of the novel, Harry treats this with a maudlin attitude, before later realizing that he'd prefer to die doing the right thing than any of the alternatives.
  • It's also done when he's given the tombstone, by an enemy who plans to kill an innocent girl right in front of him. Said enemy is protected by the Unseelie Accords, meaning he could either let her be killed and walk away free, or try to save her and incite the entire gathering of vampires to attack him while proclaiming self-defense. Upon realizing this, Harry remarks to his companions, "Sorry, guys. I guess I'm going to do the right thing."
  • Later still, Harry is forced to visit the grave marker, and finds he has company, and a conversation ensues. With greater irony: "And did you die doing the right thing?" "No."
• In Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham, when Giles first bumps into the dragon Chrysophylax and pretends not to have been seeking him out, the dragon says "Excuse me, were you looking for me?". Chrysophylax is at that moment in control of the situation. When he meets Giles for the second time, Giles utters the phrase while holding him at sword point, mirroring the exact reversal of the situations.
• In the Father Brown story "The Mistake of the Machine", an American tells Father Brown that he might be astonished a known criminal could be in a relationship with a New York débutante (Father Brown having expressed no such astonishment) because as an Englishman he doesn't appreciate how rapidly Americans can rise. When it transpires that the missing Lord Falconroy and the prisoner identified as a petty con-man from some years earlier are one and the same, Father Brown repeats his speech to him with "American" and "English" reversed.
• The Franny K. Stein book The Fran That Time Forgot does this with the quote "The most important thing is that nobody will laugh at us again. There is nothing worse than being laughed at." The line is first stated by Franny to her infant self when she's justifying her decision to change her Embarrassing Middle Name, while the second instance has Teen Franny saying it to present Franny when it turns out that changing the middle name still resulted in Franny being laughed at and that the ostensibly harmless lecture Franny gave to Baby Franny resulted in Franny's anger at the humiliation being made much worse and driving her to become evil.
• This occurs repeatedly, and often somewhat wittily, in Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman. For instance, the main character tells a traitorous friend that "I wouldn't climb over the backs of my friends to save myself." — and in flashback, as a school bus teeters on the edge of a cliff, he literally climbs over their backs to reach the door.
• "Back and back and back" is at first used between The Giver and Jonas to describe why things are how they are. Later, it is to emphasize the hopelessness of changing anything.
• Harry Potter examples:
  • In Philosopher's Stone, there's Ron's "Are you a witch or not?!" to Hermione; years later, in Deathly Hallows, she says "Are you a wizard or not?!" to him.
  • 'Weasley Is Our King'. The Slytherins were just asking for the Insult Backfire on that one.
  • In Order of the Phoenix, more than once Hermione discourages Ron from doing things she considers unbecoming of an authority figure by reminding him that he's a prefect. Cue Half-Blood Prince, in which Harry makes fun of her for secretly interfering with Cormac's Quidditch performance when Ron's trying out for the same position as Cormac by reminding her of her prefect position. Not surprisingly, she's not amused.
• In the book and movie Holes, the Warden says "Excuse Me?" in every scene she's in, mostly to say something like "shut up, I have all the power." However, when Stanley finds the treasure she's after, she asks to see what's in the box, and gets an "Excuse Me?" in response.
• There was a short story called In 50 Years, Who Will Know? or some such, where a girl is constantly told this by her mother whenever something goes wrong, trying to teach the girl not to take misfortune so seriously. Eventually, the girl starts telling herself this (and hating herself for it, as she finds no comfort in it at all). When the mother tries to bleach her hair and ends up dying it "maybe even glow-in-the-dark green", the girl uses this line on her mother. Her mother finds it no more comforting than her daughter did.
• In The Left Hand of God, Arbell Materazzi swears her eternal love to Thomas Cale by specific words about how nothing can break them apart: "If there is a soft breeze on your cheek, it may be my breath" and stuff like that. At the end of the first book, after she has been persuaded to betray him (as he especially sees it) to save her people, he repeats the same words in a message to her, now making them a threat.
• Combined with a Right Behind Me moment in R.A. Salvatore's The Legend of Drizzt novel The Two Swords:
  Kaer'lic: Too much have I seen of these wretched and foul-smelling orcs. Too many tendays have we spent in their filthy company, listening to their foolish gibbering, and pretending that anything they might have to say would be of the least bit of interest to us. Gruumsh take Obould, and Lady Lolth take Drizzt, and may they both be tortured until eternity's end!
  *Obould comes from behind her and takes her by the hair*
  Obould: Do you recognize the foul smell? Does my gibbering offend you now?
• Used a couple of times in the early Myth Adventures books, minus the time-delay: Gleep does something clumsy and Skeeve scolds him for it, only to turn around and do the same clumsy thing himself and get scolded (with exactly the same words) by Aahz.
• In Tad Williams' Otherland, Ax-Crazy Serial Killer Dread, who is The Dragon for the Big Bad, has a mantra that serves as his Catchphrase: "Confident, cocky, lazy, dead." Needless to say, this comes back full circle, when after taking over Otherland and going on an apocalyptic orgy of destruction, he has the Other at his mercy. Breaking through its final defenses, he prepares for his ultimate triumph, only to have it calmly recite his mantra back to him as it shows him the impending destruction of the system, with him inside. Oh, Crap!.
• In The Outsiders, after coming home very late, Ponyboy's oldest brother angrily yells at him for always using the excuse "I didn't mean to." Later, on the exact page, after he hits Ponyboy, he is stunned and says "I didn't mean to", even as Ponyboy ran out of the house.
• Pax: "I'll help you on three conditions..." First said by Vola to Peter, when he needs her help. Later, Peter decides to help her and repeats the line.
• The prologue of Phoenix Rising depicts armored figures breaking down the doors of the Vantage house and entering with murderous intent. The first chapter opens with thunderous knocking on the doors of the Vantage house and the entrance of armored figures — not hostile this time, but as part of a ceremony welcoming Rion Vantage to the ranks of the Justiciars. There's an extra twist that doesn't become clear until later: Rion's parents were murdered by corrupt Justiciars — the intent may be different in the two scenes, but the group of armored figures is the same.
• A Piece in the Game of Gods: From part 36:
  “You waited until I was tired and distracted,” Maelyne said with a grimace of pain, “then struck me from behind. I would expect nothing else from a coward.”
  
  “Cunning and strategy,” Arakthiel responded in his eerie voice, which sounded even stranger now that it was coming from his own throat rather than the one he’d borrowed from Robe. “Not cowardice.”
  
  [...]
  
  A moment later, a bolt of silver energy hit Arakthiel from behind.
  
  Arakthiel howled in pain, while Maelyne gave him a dark smile, saying, “Cunning and strategy.”
• In the first arc of Pretty Little Liars, the secrets that A first starts blackmailing them with were all mirrors of the secrets they had in the seventh grade that Ali knew.
• In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, when The Inscrutable Machine invades Mech's base, Mech says that they're in violation of an official truce, calling them children in the process. Bad Penny echoes "children" and "truce" back at him as part of an Armor-Piercing Question.
  Mech: Are you children aware that The Inscrutable Machine is violating an official superhero-supervillain truce?
  Bad Penny: That's the problem isn't it? You don't consider us supervillains, you consider us children. If the situation were reversed, would we have been protected by a truce?
• In The King of Attolia, there's a scene where Eugenides goes to see Relius and says, "Are you ready to discuss the resources of your queen?" It's quickly revealed this was an echo of the previous book.
  • Later on, "You forgot it's only a wooden sword."
• In Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native There are two back to back gambling scenes. In the first Damon Wildeve wins all the money off of Christian Cantle — much of it borrowed. In the next, unbeknownst to Christian, Diggory Venn, who had been listening in on the gambling, wins back all the money from Wildeve, intending to give it back to its true owner (though he doesn't actually know who owns all the money). During the first gambling scene, Wildeve taunts Christian to wage more by telling the story of an American who, having lost his money and most of his clothes, kept wagering until he "won back his coat, won back his hat, won back his umbrella, his watch, his money, and went out of the door a rich man". Venn throws this story back at Wildeve, line by line, as he is winning back the money.
• Rewind (Terry England) opens with Aaron Lee Fairfax, one of the seventeen 'Rewound Children', reciting his personal information to disbelieving interrogators. It becomes a sort of mantra for him, and is repeated several times throughout the novel, updated to reflect recent events. In another very Squicky instance, during the interrogation, he is stripped naked for photos, and weakly jokes around by asking if he's posing for pornography. Later, upon seeing the photos published in a trashy tabloid, he repeats this, now knowing the answer.
• In the first book of The Reynard Cycle, after Isengrim defeats his lover Hirsent in a bloodless duel, Reynard asks him why he didn't let her win. "When you fight," he answers, "fight to win." "Even against the ones you love?" Reynard asks. "Especially then," Isengrim replies. "For you will never know a more dangerous foe." Two books later Reynard and Isengrim duel to the death, and repeat the conversation.
• Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Guan Yu says to Cao Cao "I trust you have been well since we last parted?" Later Cao Cao says the same thing to Guan Yu's severed head.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • In A Game of Thrones Cersei's "I shall wear [the bruise] like a badge of honor" after Robert hits her, echoed to her later by Ned, when she slaps him.
  • In A Storm of Swords Arya Stark manages to sneak up on the Tickler, a familiar torturer, and maniacally spouts off his modus operandi interrogation speech while furiously stabbing him: "Is there gold hidden in the village? Is there silver? Gems? Is there food? Where is lord Beric?..."
  • Theon spends most of A Dance with Dragons in a state of Stockholm Syndrome denying his identity due to the horrific abuse he suffered at the hands of his captor, Ramsay Bolton. In his internal monologue, he frequently repeats the line "You have to know your name" in order to remind himself that he's supposed to be "Reek", not Theon. At the end of his last chapter in the book he repeats the line to emphasize that he once again recognizes himself as Theon.
• The last line of the Star Trek novel A Stitch in Time: "You're always welcome..." Addressed to Bashir by Garak, this is the same line given earlier to Garak by Astraea, the leader of the Oralian faith. On one hand, its use at the end signifies the genuine spiritual confidence behind Garak's invite, and suggests he has truly found a sense of peace within himself, at least on some level. He is "opening up" to Bashir, implicitly with genuine eagerness to make a connection. This represents considerable Character Development. It's ironic, though, in that Garak, a "night person" is now echoing Astraea, vessel of the light.
• In the novelization of Star Wars Revenge Of The Sith:
  • Anakin drops his lightsaber down a turboshaft, thus earning himself another lecture about holding on to the damn thing. This lecture, however, comes when Obi-Wan's saber has been confiscated by Grievous's droids, allowing Anakin to throw Obi-Wan's own words back at him.
  • This then leads to a Brick Joke when Obi-Wan drops his lightsaber on Utapau and is glad Anakin isn't there to make sure he doesn't live it down.
  • Dooku gets one in his mind. Before the duel, he reflects on how he plans to eventually destroy his non-human allies: "Treachery is the way of the Sith." During the fight, when Palpatine starts shouting encouragement to Anakin, Dooku wonders what the hell he's doing before it hits him: "Treachery is the way of the Sith."
• Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour" involves the protagonist learning of her husband's death. At first, heartbroken, she ponders the prospect of living lonely, empty years without him, and fears "that life might be long". Later, she realizes that without him she's free to live her life out from under his thumb, and now hopefully prays "that life might be long". It's doubly ironic because she dies just a few minutes later.
• Temps: In "The Oedipus Effect", DPR scientist Dr Sweetland is being sued by a Smug Snake lawyer after a kid who was found to not be a precog warned his father he was in danger, and the father ignored the warning and was killed. When Sweetland protests that he can't prove the DPR was at fault, the lawyer replies "I don't have to prove anything. I just have to sow the seeds of doubt." Later, Sweetland combines a few things he's learnt about the lawyer with his own theory that precognition is actually subconcious telekinesis, and suggests the lawyer might be telekinetically responsible for the man's death, with the kid picking it up telepathically (they never tested him for that). When the lawyer gets outraged by this, Sweetland retorts "But I don't have to prove anything, do I? I only have to sow the seeds of doubt."
• The Treachery of Beautiful Things: Jenny, after seeing her brother swallowed by the forest, has almost persuaded herself that she had hallucinated it. She tells herself as she approaches the woods where he vanished that it's only trees. Later — after getting into herself and finding it the Land of Faerie, she tries to talk to a tree spirit that she knows is fairly harmless and tells herself that it's only a tree, and notices the echo herself.
• Warrior Cats: There are a couple:
  • When Sandpaw and Dustpaw get to go the Gathering (a special event that happens once every month) but Graypaw doesn't, Sandpaw tells him to have a "nice quiet evening". Later, when Graypaw gets to go but Sandpaw doesn't, he mentions that he told her to have a "nice quiet evening".
  • When Sol was a kit, his mother, after being left by her mate, cries, "Why do these things always happen to me?". Sol himself later says this when he has joined SkyClan and is told at the Gathering that he cannot become a warrior (yet, although he doesn't see it that way).
  • Early in Mothwing's Secret, Hawkfrost refers to Mothwing as "Moth", and she protests since that name was in the past. Later, Mothwing thinks of him as "Hawk", wishing he'd remained like his past self.
• In Watership Down, Hazel taunts a farmyard cat, saying, "Can you run? I think not." Many chapters later, the cat has Hazel pinned to the ground and hisses, "Can you run? I think not.".
• In Wet Goddess, Ruby always appears in Zack's mind when he least expects it. Always.
  Zack: Oh, that's fucking great. Now I've got a dead dolphin swimming around in my head!
• Winnie the Pooh: "Oh, Tigger, I am glad to see you," cried Rabbit.
• Happens a few times in Worm:
  • Wheb the Undersiders crash a charity event, Armsmaster shuts them down and boasts "I've studied your powers. This was over from the moment you stepped into the room." After failing to negotiate with Armsmaster, Skitter says "You're right, Armsmaster. This was over the moment we stepped into the room" and unleashes hornets she'd hid in her armor, distracting him long enough for the Undersiders to escape.
  • Done by Skitter again in a similar fashion towards Alexandria. Curbstomping ensues.
  • Done by Skitter again to herself when she figures out that Dragon survived their fight. Skitter had always said "Fucking Tinkers" out of frustration as they send yet another weapon to harass the Undersiders. This time it's out of relief, that Taylor hadn't killed her favorite surviving person to get at the resources she was guarding.

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