Warburton Management
All available evidence suggests that Warburton is an effective administrator and efficient manager for England’s colonial business interests on the island. This reputation is especially ironic since it seems before he arrived there, Warburton was an astonishingly ineffective and inefficient administrative manager of his own business interests. Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to him was that nobody ever thought to build a casino there.
A Proper English Gentleman
As a result of his inability to properly manage his propensity to gambling, however, Warburton is exiled far away from that life he used to enjoy and dream about. A return to homeland would certainly not allow him to pursue the situation he creates for himself on his island. Ironically, it is only on the other side of the world practically as far from England as he can get that he can actually live out and enjoy his dream of living out his days as a proper English gentleman.
The Man of the People
The strangest ironic twist in the tale is that the character who in most stories would become the heroic man of the people placed into conflict with a privileged, British snob who once kept company with the future King turns out to be the villain. As a colonial Englishman from Barbados, the surprise that Cooper is far less connected to the indigenous natives working than the privileged character managing them is layer with class-conscious irony.
Gone Native
A subtle ironic twist is that Warburton has become one of those colonial exiles who goes native. Although he gives no outward indication and goes to great pains to avoid admitting it even to himself, that Warburton has come to identify more strongly with his adopted home than native land is made ironically manifest in the long passages in which he waxes nostalgic about the island and its culture and admits to a sense of relief when it comes time to end his visits back to England and return. And all the while he expresses this, he simultaneously protests that he has no patience for those who go native and as a someone who used to pal around with the heir to throne was simply not capable of going native even if he wanted.
An Ironic End
The story actually ends on a rather macabre if not downright gruesome bit of ironic humor. The dirty, thieving rascal of a house boy whom Cooper demeaned and humiliated as being unworthy of payment for services rendered was apparent, in fact, so good at his duties that Warburton is making plans to hire shortly after discovering that the young man is the murderer of Cooper. Cooper’s death can therefore be described as the tragically ironic consequence of not realizing how good you had it until you lost it.
