Names
Irony abounds in the names of the characters of Unforgiven. Little Bill isn’t that little physically and as a menace to anyone who threatens his autocratic control of an entire town, he is a downright enormous. Will money be enough to send Will Munny back to the dark side he’s worked so hard to put behind him? Turns out, money will be enough for Munny. Along with a healthy of revenge. The Schofield Kid is perhaps the ultimate ironic name if only because it also acts as entirely sincere mirror of western mythology: the only person who calls the Schofield Kid the Schofield Kid is the Schofield Kid himself. But as history continues to sadly prove, tell a lie often enough and you can get a surprising number of people to believe it is the true.
Ned
To suggest Little Bill is a great manager of a town is spot-on, just as the argument can be firmly made that his handling of justice is skewed beyond all redemption. Twice in the movie, Little Bill attempts or at least convinces himself he is dealing justice fairly. His first mis-assumption on this point with Delilah is a major contributing factor to all the trouble that follows. His second is an ironic misstep that will directly cause his own death. So, in a sense, beating Ned to death as retributive justice for a crime he did not even commit carries two sharp ironic edges.
