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Tone
Definition of Verbal Irony
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging outside and someone remarks "what... read full definition
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean. When there's a hurricane raging... read full definition
Verbal irony occurs when the literal meaning of what someone says is different from—and often opposite to—what they actually mean... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—All I Can:
In Chapter 1, Richard's family goes to court to try to win child support from the now-long-absent father. Richard describes, in terrible detail, how his mother cries profusely in court: she "began weeping so copiously that she could not talk for a few moments." But the outcome, nonetheless, is frustratingly ironic:
For some reason the entire thing struck me as being useless; I felt that if my father were going to feed me, then he would have done so regardless of what the judge said to him [...] at last she managed to say that her husband had deserted her and her two children, that her children were hungry, that they stayed hungry, that she worked, that she was trying to raise them alone. [...] I only heard one sentence of what he said.
"I'm doing all I can, Your Honor," he mumbled, grinning.
Richard doesn't understand the entire court proceeding. He understands that, as a Black person, the court system will not help him. And he understands that if his father didn't care about him, the court was not going to change that. The irony comes after Richard's mother describes in excruciating detail how poor and hungry their family is. In response, the father flatly lies: "I'm doing all I can." Obviously to all in attendance, he is not. The effusive, sobbing description of the hungry kids, juxtaposed against the clipped, obviously dishonest dismissal from the father, creates verbal irony. The father, like Richard, understands the irony of the situation, lying with a grin.
Related Themes:
Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Wanna Drink, Boy?:
At the beginning of Chapter 9, Richard is now 17 and works full time for a clothing store and sometimes makes deliveries by bicycle. One day, he blows a tire and is forced to walk back to the city from the suburbs on a hot summer day. But some young White men who seem to be nice enough offer for him to ride along on their running board. They are drinking in the car, and they offer him a drink, creating a darkly ironic situation:
"Wanna drink, boy?" one asked.
The memory of my six-year-old drinking came back and filled me with caution. But I laughed, the wind whipping my face.
"Oh, no!" I said.
The words were barely out of my mouth before I felt some thing hard and cold smash me between the eyes. It was an empty whisky bottle. [...]
"Ain't you learned no better sense'n that yet?" asked the man who hit me. "Ain't you learned to say sir to a white man yet?"
Richard still has some childish naivete about these White men and thinks that they are genuinely offering him a drink. In fact, the only worry he has stems from his childhood alcoholism, a period in his past which is not often explored in the book. Unintentionally, Richard reacts, "Oh, no!," and accidentally laughs out loud at his own memory, and the White men think he is laughing at them. As happens so often in the novel, Richard makes an entirely innocuous statement and is punished severely for it: one of the men bashes Richard over the head with the whiskey bottle. Richard first assumes that the White men are being kind to him, but then they immediately react with violence when Richard forgets to call the men "sir."
What follows is an instance of verbal irony, as what the men say is explicitly contradicted by their actions. The men continue to speak ironically, as what they present as kindness is in fact cruelty: "You sure ought to be glad it was us you talked to that way. You're a lucky bastard, 'cause if you'd said that to some other white man," Richard would be dead. It is verbally ironic that the men should say that Richard should be "glad" at all to have talked to them, as one of the men has just hit Richard over the head with a glass bottle, knocking him off of a moving car. These men, paradoxically casting themselves as kind and perhaps believing it, in fact reveal the real state of race relations in the south at this time.
Related Themes:
