In "Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer irony is used to show that the parents are more dangerous to their son than the "unlawful and crime ridden suburbs" beyond the fences. All they want is to keep their son safe, but all the protections they put up are, knowingly, dangerous for those that are trying to get in, and ironically those they are trying to protect. Gordimer uses dramatic irony in describing how potentially dangerous the security is, highlighting the parents stupidity in not seeing the defenses for what they really are.
I think that this is an extremely effective way of illustrating overbearing parents because it gives us the extreme so we can set boundaries accordingly. Instead of giving us the life lesson at the end of the story, we see the danger all along and hope and pray it doesn't get worse (it does). So when the final defense kills their son, we've frustratingly seen it coming all along, not to say it doesn't make the ending any less tragic.
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