a deeper understanding of what EPICAC can actually do in that it could never be done by any humans.

Another example of hyperbole is in the very structure of the story. Everything EPICAC does is bigger and better than life: he cost hundreds of millions of dollars, he covered “about an acre,” and was “seven tons.” (p. 1) While these descriptions of the character are factually correct in the fictional universe, their purpose is to outshine any computers that exist in the author’s world. This hyperbole about EPICAC’s size and value creates a difference between the expectation of the reader (that computers are machines, and the bigger and more expensive they are, the better they are at being machines) and the reality (that EPICAC the computer is a big machine, but his largeness makes him more susceptible to human qualities).

The humorous science fiction short story "EPICAC" by Kurt Vonnegut tells of a computer technician who helps to operate the world's largest computer. It has been created to assist the military in national defensive and offensive warfare. However, it performs more sluggishly than expected. This turns out to be because the computer develops a personality, something that its creator and the military brass do not foresee. The narrator discovers this by accident and then uses EPICAC to create poems for the woman he loves, a colleague named Pat. His explanations of love, girls, and marriage cause EPICAC to also fall in love with Pat. In the end, dismayed by the fact that it is composed of machine parts and not protoplasm, and therefore cannot marry Pat, EPICAC commits suicide by short-circuiting himself.

Irony in literature occurs when there is a difference between expectation and reality. Verbal irony involves the use of words to imply something different than their objective meaning. In situational irony, there is a difference between what readers expect to happen and what actually happens.

Verbal irony appears in the narrator's description of a conversation with Pat before EPICAC intervenes with poetry. He asks her to marry him, not for the first time, and she says, "So romantic, so poetic." Then she adds, "That's the way with mathematicians - all hearts and flowers." She is speaking ironically because she really means the opposite. She is not attracted to the narrator because she sees mathematicians as too cold and logical, and not romantic or poetic enough.

Most of the irony in "EPICAC," though, is situational irony. For instance, a computer is expected to function logically and is not thought to have capacity for emotion. However, once EPICAC receives the proper input of definitions, it becomes able to create romantic poetry much better than the narrator. Additionally, the narrator would normally be expected to look to another human for friendship and advice in matters of love. Instead, he turns to the computer. Initially, in fact, he trusts EPICAC more than he trusts Pat. He is honest with EPICAC about how he feels, while he lies to Pat, the supposed object of his love.

Another irony is that the narrator decides against having EPICAC write the words of his proposal, thinking that it "would have been hideously heartless," when his reliance on the machine for all the other poetic expressions of love that win Pat over is no less heartless and deceitful.

It is also ironic that EPICAC is created as a weapon of war, but then it is undone by romantic love.

The final irony is that the supposedly logical machine commits suicide for the sake of love. This shows that in a sense EPICAC loves Pat more than the narrator does, because the narrator never gives any indication that life would be intolerable if Pat ultimately turned him down.

There is a great deal of irony in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s story "EPICAC." For instance, Vonnegut uses situational irony, which is when the reader is expecting one thing, but something completely different happens. At its heart, this story is about a computer—a machine that, as far as we know, has no emotions—committing suicide over romantic love. This is ironic because we expect computers to be only capable of cold logic and to function exactly as we humans program and use them. However, in this story, the computer takes both the narrator and reader by surprise by displaying a level of autonomy and emotion that we never would have expected.

It is also faintly ironic when the narrator says, “Women can’t love machines, and that’s that.” Because, in the end, we learn that Pat did in fact fall in love with the machine, after being wooed by the poems the machine wrote.

There are also some examples of verbal irony in this story. Verbal irony is when words are used to imply something different than what they literally mean. Sarcasm, for example, is a common form of verbal irony. When the narrator asks Pat to marry him, she says:

"So romantic, so poetic...That's the way with mathematicians—all hearts and flowers." She closed a switch. "I could get more warmth out of a sack of CO2."

Pat is not in earnest when she says mathematicians are "romantic"—she's being sarcastic, as evidenced by her follow-up remark. This instance of verbal irony highlights the fact that the narrator is not poetic at all and ultimately has to rely on a computer to be romantic.