The Irony of Intimate Moments (“Requiem for a Glass Heart”)
The stone thrower perceives watching “orange juice sluice down her glass throat into her glass stomach” to be “intimate moments”. The irony of the stone thrower’s consideration is that he will still go to his mistress even after living through the intimate moment with his ‘glass family’, which underscores the deceitfulness that dominates the entire household.
The Irony of the Narrator’s Imagination in the Falling Action (“The Mark of Cain”)
In the falling action of “The Mark of Twain” the narrator envisions that she and Caleb would pack their belongings and go west and start their lives afresh. This fancy is ironic considering that, in the story’s exposition, the narrator confesses that if her husband were to abandon her she would be torn. The ambivalence between the exposition and the falling action accentuates the narrator’s emotional entanglement with the two twin brothers; it is as if she cannot live without both of them.
The Irony of “treating me (The Narrator) like the whore he doesn’t want me to be” (“The Mark of Cain”)
Caleb is emphatic that the narrator, who is his wife, should conduct herself like a principled,moral woman, yet all his deeds imply that he regards the wife as a harlot. He beats her and allows his brother to be intimate with her thinking that she is a slut who wouldn’t mind the brothers’ wicked tendencies.
