“Moment”
One of the assignments the students receive is writing a reaction paper to a poem written by a friend Ms. Gruwell. The assignment and poem touch upon the vagaries of eternal life. Ironically enough, her friend composed the poem very shortly before subsequently drowning to death in San Francisco Bay.
Tragic Irony of Diary 50
The tragic irony expressed by the writer of Diary 50 is one all too familiar to all too many people. The student writes of the ironic tailspin of going to rehab for one particular drug only to come out addicted to a more intense drug. While already in rehab twice a week as punishment for marijuana possession the ironic outcome of the experience is a brand new addiction to speed.
Diary 37
Diary 37 is a painful exercise in societal irony. Traditional values and conventional wisdom mandates to the point of guilt for a great many that the father simply by token of his biological part in creation is to be looked to within the family unit as the locus of stability and the totem of authoritarian guidance. The student writing this particular entry subverts this image to the ultimate point of ironic dimensions: she derisively refers to him as her sperm donor because her own biological father “doesn’t allow us to call him `dad’ or `father’…the titles aren’t his name so we can’t call him that.”
High and Mighty Dreams
The writer of Diary 136 manifests one of the strangest ironic circumstances within the body of students. He admits to having had to skip the class trips to Washington, D.C. and New York due to a paralyzing fear of heights. His ambition? To become a pilot.
Infamy
The students in the Freedom Writers class attain a certain level of fame due to their accomplishments in class as well as the subsequent book and movie based upon their experiences. A student who attended the school, but was not part of the class also becomes perhaps even more well-known as a result of infamy: he raped and murdered a young girl at a Las Vegas casino. The writer of Diary 93 specifically notes the almost obscene paradox at work here: “It’s ironic that while the Freedom Writers were taking a symbolic stand against violence in our candlelight vigil at the Washington Monument, a murder was being carried out.”
