Altamash teasing Sajjad (Verbal Irony)
"Just as he was opening the heavy wooden door his brother Altamash came yawning out of one of the rooms of the courtyard and said, 'What's the little Englishman doing awake at this hour? Sunrise stroll with the Viceroy?" (54).
In this passage, Altamash uses verbal irony to tease Sajjad for his employment with James Burton. Every day, Sajjad leaves his moholla (neighborhood) and dresses in English clothes (gifted to him by James Burton) to work in the Burton household. Here, Altamash is making fun of Sajjad for how his employment distances him from his home and traditions. It also contains a cutting edge because of how Sajjad is treated by the Burtons (and how Indians are treated by English colonizers as a whole). Though Sajjad is a model employee for the Burtons and James has made promises to help Sajjad's career, he is not "one of them." In the end, James never follows through with his promises to employ Sajjad and he and Elizabeth end up firing him with no warning after they make a wrong judgment about his character.
Elizabeth telling Sajjad that the Indians are casting the British out (Situational Irony)
"'How will all of us fit back into that little island now that you're casting us out? So small, England, so very small. In so many ways'" (81).
In this passage, Sajjad and Elizabeth are having a conversation outside of Qutb Minar, a tower built by Turkish invaders, Sajjad's ancestors, seven centuries ago in Delhi. Elizabeth is musing on the end of the British Raj, when English colonizers will return to England. The irony in Elizabeth's words is that she places the responsibility for the end of the British Raj in the hands of the Indian people. The reality, of course, is much more complicated. Elizabeth is not aware of, or is not admitting, the fact that British colonial rule in India was oppressive. Additionally, it was solely the doing of the English colonizers via violent means. Sajjad is taken aback by Elizabeth's phrasing, seeing the irony in the fact that she places so much authority on the Indian people rather than taking responsibility for herself and the rest of the English.
Harry's fantasies about the U.S. (Situational Irony)
In "Part-Angel Warriors," Harry muses at length about his love for the United States and what he understands as its extreme openness to foreigners. When Harry moved to the United States as an adolescent, he was eventually treated as an American: "But Harry watched not only himself but also the other sons of immigrants as they made their way through the school year, and understood that America allowed—no, insisted on—migrants as part of its national fabric in a way no other country had ever done. All you had to do was show yourself willing to be American—and in 1949, what else in the world would you want to be?" (174).
Harry's views are an example of situational irony because he does not consider how his race and class privileges helped him assimilate easily into American culture. The flaws in Harry's thinking are pointed out to him by his father, who asks, "'And do all the Negro students at your school agree with this assessment, Harry?'" (174). Harry brushes off his father's retort, but Burnt Shadows shows us Harry's miscalculation. After 9/11 and the rise of nationalistic and xenophobic sentiment across the United States, Muslims are treated with suspicion. Though Raza works for the U.S. government, has lived in the U.S. for a decade, and is a green card holder, he is immediately blamed for Harry's murder. Raza knows that he will probably not be proven innocent since Steve, who works for the CIA, is determined to place the blame on him. He goes on the run as a result but is unwittingly turned in by Kim Burton in Canada, who thought she was turning in another (possibly innocent) man. Raza ends up sent to Guantanamo Bay for a crime he did not commit, with little hope for escape.
As Burnt Shadows tells us, Harry's American dream is merely a fantasy that only works for a certain few.
The CIA's involvement in Raza's safety and Sajjad's death (Dramatic Irony)
Raza only spends a day in the mujahideen training camp before he is sent away. This is because the director of the training camp assumes that Raza is affiliated with the CIA due to his connections to Harry.
At the same time, Sajjad dies because he recognizes Harry's rickshaw driver, Sher Mohammed, and shouts his name at the fish harbor. Because Sher Mohammed is affiliated with the CIA, he is spooked by the use of his name in a space where he had been using a fake name and shoots Sajjad.
In this way, the CIA is responsible both for Raza's rescue from the danger he is in and Sajjad's untimely death. Only readers of the novel—and, eventually, Harry—are aware of this dramatic irony.
