some sense of gallows irony Does We are not so sure that it can communicate to us from beyond the grave, except through some sense of gallows irony mean We are not sure if art may be able to tell us of the other world without simply presenting images or metaphors of gallows? Context: Christ tells his disciples, and for some indigenous people still, the dead are omnipresent in the living world. In the secularised West, however, we no longer much believe in this. We live, like Hamlet, fearing death, and art bemuses and consoles us while we live. We are not so sure that it can communicate to us from beyond the grave, except through some sense of gallows irony.