The best explanation for the oxymoron is; Although, Everett considered it joy to win the bid, he just found the victory a bitter event because, the novel was a 19th century novel.
An oxymoron by definition is a figure of speech which juxtaposes concepts with opposing meanings within a word or phrase and ultimately, creates the expected ostensible self-contradiction.
On this note, an oxymoron can be used as a rhetorical device to illustrate a rhetorical point or to reveal a paradox as the case may be.
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