#21 Symbols and Irony

Does the story anywhere utilize irony of situation? Dramatic irony? Verbal irony? What functions do the ironies serve?

This novel is swimming with irony, let me start out with a excerpt about the limitations placed on Mennonite peoples by, well, by themselves. “ Imagine the least well-adjusted kid in your school starting a breakaway clique of people whose manifesto includes a ban on the media, dancing, smoking, temperate climates, movies, drinking, rock ‘n’ roll, having sex for fun, swimming, makeup, jewelry, playing pool, going to cities, or staying up past nine o’clock. That was Menno all over. Thanks a lot Menno.”(p.7) The irony comes from how everyone was unhappy doing this and all pretended to be good Mennonites but secretly drank, smoked and had casual fun, but this had to be done in secret, away from all the other Mennonites secretly smoking, drinking and having fun, because if you were caught, you were excommunicated. The teenagers were the most ironic, as they didn’t care as much about consequences and most of them did drink, smoke, party and have sex. “My parents weren’t crazy about the fact that Tash was drinking and hanging out with Ian so much, sometimes until five or six in the morning, at the pits or in the bushes around Suicide Hill or in any of the other rustic settings we young pioneers relied on to get us through the night, but it wasn’t that, really, that my mom was concerned about. Not really.” (p. 158) There are also random ironies revolving around the fact that Menno wasn’t one for explanations or dominance of every subject, so the Mennonites don’t know for sure in some situations what is moral or not. “I had never heard The Mouth use the word spectacular in any context whatsoever. I’d vaguely thought it was a sin to say spectacular.(p. 158) Also, some of the things that are not allowed are almost ironic: “What the heck was my sister doing with a library card? She’d gone too far, I knew that much.” As far as dramatic irony, there is none of that, as everything is from Nomi’s point of view, we only know what she knows, and not even all of what she knows, or delivered in the order of her thoughts. The author also uses irony for the amusement of the reader at times, and it serves no other purpose than to make you giggle. This next quotation comes from when Nomi broke her bike, while far out of town and hitched a ride home with a carney named Snake. “He made me wear one of his hats with the carnival logo on it so if someone saw me riding with him they’d think I was a co-worker and not report him. He told me he was on antibiotics because he’d gotten the clap from the cotton-candy girl. He told me that a kid like me could make twenty-five cents per rat at any fairgrounds if I knew how to swing a bat. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He told me he could not afford one more felony. I said mad, tell me about it, although I was only ten and had never heard the word felony before. It sounded like a pretty girls name to me…Travis put my bike into his dad’s truck and asked me why I didn’t tuck my pant leg into my sock. [as getting her pant stuck in the chain broke her bike, and had many times before] Somebody might see me, I said. I’d rather fall.” (p. 162) I don’t completely know what the purpose of the irony in the story is, other than to help make points and create humor in some situations.