In Mo Yan’s novels

rhetorical irony is more often manifested in the borrowing of political discourse

language contradictions and paradoxes

and the deliberate creation of exaggerations and distortions. By transplanting terms of a particular period and environment to another field

the change of context affects the original meanings of these particular terms

and the words become specious

thus producing the effect of irony. Situational irony

on the other hand

is the design of complex situations

mainly in the setting of narrative subjects

the nesting of multiple story structures

the parody of the text

and so on. It contains both the exploration of form and the irony of "truth and falsehood"

and expresses the direction of meaning through form. Thematic irony is also common in Mo Yan’s works

where the revelation of characters’ fates reflects his ironic view of existing ideas. Imagery irony refers to the contradiction between the image and the symbolic meaning behind it

and it is precisely because of this contradiction that it can penetrate through the social mask to form paradoxes and ironic expressions.