“Sing, then” - “Flowering Judas”
Laura buoys Braggioni to serenade for her although she does not savour the obligatory singing. Porter illuminates, “Laura, who haunts the markets listening to the ballad singers, and stops every day to hear the blind boy playing his reed-flute in Sixteenth of September Street, listens to Braggioni with pitiless courtesy, because she dares not smile at his miserable performance. Nobody dares to smile at him.” Accordingly, “Sing, then” is an ironic validation which gives Braggioni the notion that Laura acknowledges his fanatical endeavor to regale her. Heeding to Braggioni’s singing is a wearisome custom that Laura must partake.
A Nobility - “Flowering Judas”
Katherine Anne Porter observes, “Braggioni loves himself with such tenderness and amplitude and eternal charity that his followers - for he is a leader of men, a skilled revolutionist, and his skin has been punctured in honorable warfare - warm themselves in the reflected glow, and say to each other: 'He has a real nobility, a love of humanity raised above mere personal affections.” The frenzied followers’ categorization of Braggioni, 'He has a real nobility, a love of humanity raised above mere personal affections’, is ironic considering the superfluous narcissism that he parades. If he were an unqualified nobility, he would not have treated others callously to flatter his bizarre ‘personal affection.’ Braggioni’s disposition is irreconcilable with ‘loving humanity’ for he blossoms on the idolization of himself.
“A Good Girl” - “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”
Doctor Harry notifies Granny Weatherall: “ Now, now, be a good girl, and we’ll have you up in no minute.” The designation of ‘good girl’ is ironic considering that she is “ a woman nearly eighty years old.” Granny Weatherall cast-offs the label due to her timeworn maturity. The ironic ‘good girl’ is a constituent of the humor that highlights Doctor Harry’s anticipations vis-à-vis granny’s mutual collaboration in the progress of her treatment for a ‘good girl’ would neither agitate or flout her doctor’s guidance.
