Dramatic irony of the father's death
Because Marie's story flashes back to her childhood from her adult perspectives, we understand that although young Marie doesn't know it, that drive to the hospital was for her father to die. She had no idea he would never leave the hospital alive, but the reader knows, because the narrator Marie discovered it for herself in the fullness of time.
The ironic brattiness
Young Marie is innocent, but she's kind of a brat. Life is difficult for Irish Americans in New York, which means Marie must help out more than most kids, but the novelist notices that Marie doesn't seem to care that her mother works way harder than she does. This changes of course when Marie comments later in life on her arrogance. Besides, who can hold it against her, teenagers can be moody sometimes. The bigger picture here is that Marie didn't know her father was dying, and so when she thinks of her father, she thinks about how young and foolish she still was to have experienced something so difficult.
The irony of experience
The novel is not a flamboyant one, but a rather patient, thoughtful story about the development of perspective and the ironic changes that years of experience can mean. For instance, there is a sad moment when she realizes that because she was too selfish to take the bread out of the oven all those years ago, she now thinks of her father when she smells burnt bread. These sad, sweet little ironies happen throughout her 66 more years of life.
The irony ghostly realism
The novel is often regarded for its sweet, slow development, and even critics of the novel agree that it has a captivating quality. This is ironic, because the novel is ordinary. The characters are not larger than life. They're not unusual or unique. And yet, the realism of the story creates a surreal quality to the story, like a ghost story, perhaps. Perhaps one way of thinking of the book is that although it's realist fiction, it's like a ghost story, since the daughter mourns her father throughout her life.
The irony of death and life
The coming of age moment of the novel captures the basic irony of death so well. One moment, everything was fine, and one moment later, the patriarch had died without warning. Death can happen so suddenly, and yet, this is what corrects Marie's selfish attitude, and it is what sets the tone for her pensive, mature life. It seems that the most important part of Marie's perspective is that she knows the brutal finality of death, and has known it since she was a little girl.
