Irony In Sherman Alexe's Because My Father

“Humor is everywhere in that there’s irony in just about anything a human does” said Bill Nye. People, on incident, create ironies every day, from simply wearing a watch when your wrist hurts, to printing paper about saving the environment. Three prime examples of the many ironies of life: “Because my father always said he was the only Indian who saw Jimi Hendrix play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock”. Although many of our readings are immensely different in plot and setting, they all still include many forms of irony.
In “Because My Father” by Sherman Alexie, many ironies are seen throughout the story, especially between the father and the rest of the characters. Immediately in the beginning of the story, the father is portrayed as

a hippie, who believes in a peaceful end to war, and one would expect to see peaceful protests and speeches against war. Soon after the photo though, an extreme change occurs, he beats up a National Guard private. “In his hands my father holds a rifle above his head, captured in that moment before he proceeded to beat the shit out of a national guard private lying prone on the ground” (Alexie 25). This sudden hectic situation stands against all hippie beliefs of peace, for he is instead inciting war. Further on in the story, the father, having recently fought with the mother, left on a bike ride to escape them, and ended up crashing. One would expect the mother to leave the father alone in the hospital due to anger, and shun him even when he recovered. This was not the case though, when the father was sent to the hospital, the mother immediately went to see him, and repeatedly comforted him through song, day after day, until he recovered. “And even though my mother didn’t want to be married to him anymore and his wreck didn’t change her mind about that, she still came to see him every day. She sang Indian tunes under her breath, in time with the hum of the machines hooked into my father” (Alexie 33). Instead of leaving the father alone out of anger, she comforted him, an Ironic set of beliefs.
In our next short story,” A Good Man Is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’Connor, even more Irony is used, though of these, two main Ironies stand above the rest. In the start of the short story, the reader is introduced to a relatively normal family, and learns that a killer is prowling their planned vacation area. The reader would assume that this family would avoid this obviously dangerous area, in favor of another, safer, one, far away from the area, and remain completely safe. The family eventually does decide to leave the area, though in the end meet the killer and are brutally murdered. “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did”(O’Connor 1). Although the reader expected a perfectly safe vacation due to the mother’s brash speech, the murderer did kill them all, creating an extremely ironic situation. Later on in the story, the grandmother ends up being the last of her family alive, and pleads with the murderer for life, causing the reader to believe that the murderer, in a sudden fit of compassion, turns himself in to the law, as well as sparing the grandmothers life. That is not at all what happened. Instead, when the grandmother reaches for the murderer to change his mind, he recoils at her touch, and immediately kills her with his revolver, and feels no remorse. “’Why you’re one of my own children!’ she reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them” (O’Connor 6). This unthinking murder of the grandmother is the exact opposite of the happy ending the reader expects, thus creating a situation of Irony.
Our final short story, written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Also includes several examples of ironic situations patched throughout it.

First of all, when Pelayo and his wife find an angel on their courtyard, the reader thinks of a pristine holy white being without a flaw which would awe the observers. Although it did awe its observers, the angel was not pristine, but dirty, with tattered wings, and was infected with vermin, such as ticks and fleas. “He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had” (Marquez 1). Although one would expect this Angel to be the perfect holy being they have heard of, he instead was the exact opposite, an old man who is dirty and fragile. At the near end of the story, after the family exploits the angel as much as possible for riches, one would think that this family would be overly grateful, and nurse the angel back to health with their newly made money, though instead they left the angel on the floor to rot, and offered no assistance to him whatsoever. “If they washed it down with creolin and burned tears of Myrrh inside it every so often, it was not an homage to the angel but to drive away the dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new house into an old one” (Marquez 3). Although one may expect all people with any decency to treat an angel with the utmost respect, this family did not, instead they treated him as a slave, who is used to make

money.