Irony of Stefan and Anne
Stefan and Anne have land that they own but they are lazy and refuse to work the land to make it produce anything that would benefit them. Even though they earn a bit from leasing the land to Teo and Maria, when a hard winter hits they don’t actually have any reserves of food for emergencies. In fact, though they own land it is all but useless to them as Stefan refuses to work it as he disdains farm labor and fritters his time away drinking in town taverns. Anne is no better as she is too weak both physically and mentally, being completely reliant on other people for her needs.
Irony of Teodor and Maria
In contrast Teodor and Maria have nothing but grit and determination to their name but with that they are able to coax a decent crop from the land that they lease from Anne and Stefan. The land produces enough crops in fact to see them and their extended family through bleak winters. In their hands the land leased from his sister becomes an absolute treasure producing food to eat and a surplus which in turn creates a tidy profit that given time could have been turned into real wealth.
Irony of Teodor’s Incarceration
Teodor was incarcerated for withholding grain that he was going to feed his family; in other words he served time simply for trying to keep his family fed rather than because he had committed an actual crime. The irony and tragedy of it all is the sheer injustice of his sentence: the grain was his to begin with and the grain was going to be confiscated to feed the revolutionary army, leaving him and his family to starve.
Irony of Stefan
Stefan is a career soldier but he has absolutely no loyalty and serves no one but himself. Initially he starts out as a soldier in the Czar’s army but when the Romanovs are overthrown and Stalin and the Communist Party come to power he manages to wiggle his way into the ranks of their army and eventually becomes an officer. Stefan, despite his physical strength and endurance as a soldier, refuses to apply these adequate physical traits to farm work, seeing it as something beneath his dignity. He disdains farm labor so much that he would rather endure the indignity of poverty and starvation than lift a finger to till the soil.
Irony of Circumstances
Every single circumstance seems to be inimical to Teo and Maria’s success. Teo serves his two-year sentence and hasn’t got any cash to his name so to make ends meet he agrees to lease farm space from his opportunistic relatives. The land on the farm they lease is stony, poor, and partially frozen from lack of tilling. The weather turns nasty often and winters are long and hard and to make matters worse, when the stolid couple manage to tame the land, their greedy, scheming relations use a combination of manipulation and violence to cheat them out of their earnings.
