“I’d never done a bad thing that gave me so much satisfaction”
Lily narrates, “Toyah, the nearest little town, was four miles away, and sometimes when we went there, the kids followed Dad around imitating him, which made want to trash them something fierce. Dad usually acted like those kids didn’t exist… while he and Buster were loading the wagon, I went back to stable and tried to explain to those kids that they were hurting people’s feelings, but all they did was snicker, so I shoved them into the manure pile and ran. I’d never done a bad thing that gave me so much satisfaction, my only regret was that I couldn’t tell Dad about it.” Ordinarily, engaging in bad actions would elicit remorse in someone. However, Lily delights in hurting the kids back. Her ironic satisfaction implies that the shoving has satisfied her unconscious hankering for vengeance for the kids because they humiliate her father. The hunger for vengeance diminishes Lily’s feelings of guilt.
The Irony of Adam Casey’s Smartness
Lily explains, “What those kids didn’t understand about Dad was that, although his speech did not sound sort of marbly, he was smart. He’d been taught by a governess, and he was all the time reading books on philosophy and writing long letters to politicians like William Taft, William Jennings Bryan, and Frederick William Seward, who had been Abraham Lincoln’s assistant secretary of state. Seward even wrote back, letters Dad treasured and kept in a locked tin box.” Although Adam Casey has impediments with his speech and communication he is an intelligent man. People and kids mock him for his disability and regard him an unintelligent person because he cannot communicate eloquently. The impediment does not impact his intelligence based on his penchant to study philosophy books and ability to write letters to prominent persons. If he were dumb, he would not concentrate on reading the philosophical works and he would not author intelligible letters.
