The Irony of Youth and Learning
A considerable amount of space is allotted to Annie’s description of her youth. During her younger days she had so much energy and so much zeal to pursue her interests, which she did. In learning new information she begins to form new conclusions about the world around her but being young she has zero experience to ground her conclusions and she becomes terribly opinionated as a result. The more Annie learned the more “sure” she became of the “rightness” of their opinions but not understanding that the world is so much wider than she understands and that matters are rarely as black and white as it seems.
The Irony of Annie’s Relationship with Authority
Annie, during a rebellious phase in her life, resents nearly authority figures thinking them to be either a stifling presence or hypocritical. The irony here is that the very institutions that she dislikes most, such as school, the church, and her family, are the very same institutions that have nurtured her as well as helped develop her talents to make her the successful. Despite what she feels, she is not only greatly indebted to these institutions but she, at various junctures in her life, was in absolute need of their support for her well being and safety.
The Irony of Annie’s Rebellion
In acting out her resentments towards what she believed to be “tyrannical and hypocritical” organizations Annie turns, albeit briefly, into a real nuisance of a human being. She would go as far as to flaunt the breaking of anti-smoking laws and even endangers herself and others, by crashing her car, damaging property in the process, just to show her disdain for established rules. In exemplifying this rowdy behavior however, rather than strengthen her case against the organizations she is rebelling against she instead builds a case against herself by becoming a textbook example of precisely why these rules were written and agreed on in the first place: to protect society against hellions like herself.
The Irony of Annie’s Curiosity
Annie’s curiosity gives her a tenacity for learning unlike many children her age, or many people for that matter. This immense curiosity drives her to really observe events, meticulously chronicle them, and feel emotions with a nearly heart-rending intensity. It is ironic however that this intense curiosity is actually driven in part by fear. Annie fears that if she doesn’t pay as much attention and record every nuance of emotion that she can squeeze out of her writing ability she would lose vital elements of her childhood.
The Irony of the “Interior Life”
Annie lives out a great chunk of her life in her head. It is ironic that her internal thought life becomes even more real to her than the life happening around her. It is also ironic that her “interior life” because of its deeply introspective and deeply private nature also gave rise to a self-centered and aloof regard for others around her. In cultivating her interior life she reads voraciously, gaining vast confidence in the information she gathers from the materials she reads and becomes a know-it-all, dismissive of other people’s opinions, understanding books and data more than understanding people and their motivations.
