QUESTION 5 The poet protests against child labor and condemns the harm done to children exploited in this practice. Yet in lines 23-24, the child narrator writes that “Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm / So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.” This is an ironic expression of the narrator’s childlike trust. The irony is a literary device used to show contrast or incongruity between expectations for a situation and what is the reality. It can also be a difference between what might be expected to happen and what actually occurs.