The irony of self-containment
Eileen works at a prison. She isn't a prisoner, but she does feel imprisoned by her fate. Ironically, it is a self-containment. She doesn't have to live with her abusive father and work at the prison. In fact, she longs to move out and go try her luck in the romantic adventure that is New York City, but she is repressed. When she goes drinking with Rebecca, she realizes that she isn't becoming who she wants. Eventually, the story frees her from her fate in X-Ville.
Leonard's irony
Eileen is not a murderer, or else she probably would have executed her father a long time ago. That means that her encounter with Leonard Polk is a little like an ironic encounter with her own shadow. Does she want her father to die? Maybe not, but at the same time, the injustice of his domestic abuse raises the question of divine judgment. The X in X-Ville points to the ironic nature of this decisive crossroads. She must decide whether to execute judgment or to forgive.
The irony of Rebecca
Rebecca seems like a hero until she gets involved in the Polk family drama too much. When she invites Eileen to the wrong house, to see the life that Mrs. Polk has lived since the murder of her husband at the hand of her sexually abused son, then Eileen realizes Rebecca's ironic nature. Not only does Rebecca invite her to drink and forget her problems, she also draws Eileen into a full exploration of her own emotional damage. The Polk family is like her own repressed subconscious, and Rebecca is like an ironically-gendered anima, drawing her into a crisis that will lead to Eileen's ultimate freedom.
Eileen as executor
Eileen ends up with a gun and a wounded witness. She drives Mrs. Polk into the wilderness where Rebecca has instructed her to murder Mrs. Polk in cold blood and pin the murder on her father. Notice that by committing a murder, Eileen hopes to incriminate her guilty father—like Leonard! But instead, she executes a new kind of judgment. She forgives her father by sparing the evil Mrs. Polk. She also spares her own self of fate, and she escapes to take on a new name and a new life in a new city that she loves.
The dramatic irony of age
This story is fifty years old, told by a narrator in her winter years of life. Eileen is old—in her seventies, reflecting on her complicated youth and the drama of her coming-of-age. This means that the novel explores the dramatic irony of age, because in the old lady, no one would have expected that Eileen almost committed a murder and pinned it on her father, because elderly appearances often conceal the vibrant drama of a life lived, but Eileen knows fully well that her life was supremely dramatic and deeply human.
