Richard’s experiences as a hospital orderly illustrate
three different forms of irony. First, narrative irony, which, as
the name suggests, occurs when the mood created at one point in
a narrative quickly shifts. Immediately preceding the story of his
work in the hospital, Richard stands in line at the relief station,
watching the black men and women talk with each other and swooning
with visions of the unity of all oppressed people worldwide. From
this optimistic mood, Wright immediately brings us into the hospital basement,
where Brand and Cooke appear as absolute jewels of pettiness and
buffoonery. Richard’s vision of hope is thus ironically replaced
by an immediate experience of utter hopelessness.
Second, situational irony refers to circumstances that
seem the opposite of what one would expect. In these chapters, situational irony
arises from the racial segregation of employees in the hospital. Richard
has moved to the North because of the promise that Chicago would
be free from racism. Yet he finds racism anyway—though perhaps
not in as overt a form—most ironically in a hospital, a scientific
institution ostensibly devoted to the public good.
Third, dramatic irony occurs when we as readers know something
that a character does not. At the hospital, Richard, predictably,
is interested in the research. Yet when he tries to learn about
it, a doctor says to him, “If you know too much, boy, your brains might
explode.” These words are quite ironic, for there is a decent chance
that Richard actually knows more than this snobby doctor: not about
medicine, but about literature, sociology, history, politics, and
other disciplines. Readers of Black Boy know Richard’s
ambitious self-education and his future as a prominent writer and
intellectual. The doctor does not, which makes his words comically misguided
and ironic.
Though Richard embraces Communism as a means to organize and
express his hope for the unity of oppressed peoples, we immediately
see hints that Communism will not be the ultimate answer he has
been looking for. Richard is discouraged when the Communist cartoons
horrify his mother, as he notes that it is difficult to lead the masses
when addressing them in a manner that they cannot understand. Moreover,
the petty bickering within the Party disheartens him, leading him
to bemoan the fact that if the John Reed Club cannot unite itself,
it will never be able to unite the masses. The episode with Comrade
Young is perhaps the most obvious indication that Communism will
not meet Richard’s hopeful expectations. Young’s sudden appearance
and seizure of power is quite funny, but it makes Richard wonder:
“what kind of club did we run that a lunatic could step into it
and help run it?” He is right to ask, because this incident, more
than any other, serves to undermine the integrity of the movement
in which he has so much faith.
