The "Luck" of Roaring Camp
The miners attribute the good fortune that they briefly enjoy to the arrival of the camp’s newest resident: a baby born to a prostitute. Ironically, this good luck is the consequence of the baby’s mother dying shortly after giving birth with the issue of paternity still a complete mystery.
The Luck of Roaring Camp
Most readers likely assume the title refers specifically to that good fortune which seems to be collateral windfall to the ironic bad luck of of a baby essentially orphaned at birth. In this sense, the title itself seems ironic since the story moves inexorably toward a tragic conclusion. The real irony here is that title makes no claim to the type of luck existing at the camp. It is simple “The Luck” and not “The Good Luck.”
Breaking Stereotypes
The most direct use of irony occurs in a paragraph in which the narrator confronts the issue of stereotypes of frontier types for readers on the other side of the Mississippi River. The biggest rogue in the camp has a face right out of sacred Renaissance portraiture. The inveterate gambler is not some wildly impulsive scoundrel, but a latter-day Hamlet eternally trapped in the moody silence of intellectually debating the odds of any possible action. By the time the reader learns that the hands swinging the strongest pick in the mine has only three fingers and the resident marksman has only one eye, the point being made is unavoidable.
The Geography of Luck
The good luck enjoyed by the camp is attributed to some sacred power invested in the baby, but that luck is intensified and defended against outside influences courtesy of the unique geography of the locale. Surrounded by natural defenses against incursion by outsiders from three directions, the men can focus their defensive postures toward the one route of entry. Under most circumstances, this works to their advantage, but one way in also means just one way out and this is where the potential for good fortune to go bad and bad luck to become disastrous can happen to abruptly to defend against.
"The d-d little cuss!"
Kentuck’s favorite term of endearment for the baby was considered such a vulgar profanity at the time of publication that it merited censorship. When the missing letters are filled in, Kentuck is calling him a “damned” little cuss. This is perhaps the story’s ultimate ironic expression considering the elevated sacred state in which the miners hold and treat him. The irony becomes bitter with an ending revealing the literal truth of the little cuss being damned from birth.
