Ray Bradbury employs the literary technique of situational irony in his sci-fi short story "A Little Journey." In the story, an eighty-five-year-old woman named Mrs. Amelia Bellowes reads an advertisement promising to take paying customers to Mars, where they will supposedly board a spaceship and travel to meet God. After spending a week at Mr. Thirkell's Restorium, Mrs. Bellowes and the other elderly customers interested in meeting God challenge Mr. Thirkell, who attempts to delay their mission to see the Lord. Once the ladies discover that Mr. Thirkell is a con man with an old, dilapidated rocketship, Mrs. Bellowes and the other ladies force Mr. Thirkell to pilot the spaceship and leave to Mars to meet God. The situational irony occurs when the faulty spaceship explodes, and everyone is hurled into space and toward their deaths, where they spiritually meet God. While Mrs. Bellowes and the other elderly costumers do not physically meet God, they do meet Him in the spiritual realm when they die in space, which is an example of situational irony.
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