". . . it still made me smile a little to think about it. I had to keep on acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all" (Kesey 197).
In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the narrator pretends to be deaf and dumb and uses it to his advantage to listen in on the novel's antagonist. This passage is an ironic come-to-realization that if he wanted to know or understand anything further, he would have to keep on pretending not to hear it.
There is a small hint of verisimilitude in this passage as well. In life, one sometimes has to stay quiet and oblivious to listen to and comprehend what the general public has to say. If someone puts his or her opinion out in the open, someone else may disagree with it and shoot it down. So, instead of putting out an opinion in lieu of it getting shot down, one may want to listen and learn from what the other opinion conveys. One can judge and learn better based on that.
Irony function broadly in other ways throughout the text. A few more ironic aspects of the novel would be the fact that the most sane man in the institution ends up being the biggest problem and the fact that this same man chose to go to the institution for an escape but still ended up being trapped. He wanted to escape from his prison sentence so he switches it to a commitment to the mental institution to find out all of the other patients like him can leave when they want to but he can't.
Irony isn't heavily present throughout the novel, but when it does show up, it leaves a lasting effect. There is a purpose behind it; it helps drive the novel.
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