A turkey gobbler “gineral”
In this way Thomas Anderson talked about one of the generals, who visited his master the night before. He says that the man’s face was so red of madness that he looked like a turkey gobbler. This irony helps the reader to look at some things and events from the other side, from the side of the servants, to feel what they feel, to understand them and their attitude to their masters better.
Good for white but bad for colored
Aunt Lidia, and old kind black woman, the kindest creature in the world, tells Robert and Tom that she wanted to learn reading someday, she even had a book and tried to “to make out what war in it” but every time her missus caught Lidia with a book in her hands, she used to whip her fingers. And poor Lidia couldn’t understand why reading is good for white people and bad for colored, because she considered that there is nothing wrong with it. The irony shows how naïve are slaves and that there are a lot of simple things which they cant understand.
The aristocracy of color
The narrator uses this phrase with ironic even somewhat sarcastic shadowing. Robert emphasizes that aristocracy of color is the main problem of America: “wide enough to include the South with its treason and Utah with its abominations, but too narrow to include the best and bravest colored man who bared his breast to the bullets of the enemy during your fratricidal strife”. The irony is used for thinking over the situation rather than for having fun.
