Tiger Eats Tiger (Situational Irony)
In "Bestiary," Nino's uncle, the Kid, occupies a role parallel to the tiger that roams through their estate. His family members avoid him, and before long, Isabel learns to avoid him too. It's therefore ironic that in the end, the Kid is eaten by the tiger, perhaps sent to his death by one of the people he took so much joy in tormenting.
Wouldn't Hurt a Snail (Situational Irony)
The afternoon of the Kid's presumably horrible death at the fangs and claws of a tiger, Nino and Isabel collect snails. They plan to experiment on the snails, and in order to do so, they plan to dry them out on wax paper. Cortázar writes, "[Nino] was going to kill them by himself, it hurt Isabel to do it" (95). Cortázar also provides the reader with all the circumstantial evidence required to strongly suspect that Isabel meant to send the Kid to his death. So, it is ironic that she has an aversion to killing slugs, but is alright with killing a man.
Guilty of Making Literature (Verbal Irony)
In "Blow-Up," the narrator declares that "Michel is guilty of making literature, of indulging in fabricated unrealities" (124). This statement cannot escape the label of irony as it occurs within the framework of a meta-fictional short story. The line seems to be a conspicuous nod from Cortázar to his reader, a brief gesture of recognition that this whole structure is a fiction, an indulgent exercise.
Competing Dream Worlds (Situational Irony)
The very axis of "The Night Face Up" is the situationally ironic notion that the space which the reader has been lulled into believing is "real space" actually turns out, by the climax of the story, to be the "dream space," and everything taking place during the seemingly-imaginary Aztec war of the blossom is revealed to be the "real space."
