Murphy Homes – a band with big ego
The narrator highlights the image if a criminal band called Murphy Homes – the boys were cruel, they elevated bar fights, they beat black people "with gas nozzles, they busted knees and melted faces ”. Everyone was afraid of them and the scale of their banditry made them mythical. Murphy Holmes’s members were too pompous, they liked to “raise their chins until their egos were eye level with God”. Here the irony represents understatement of those guys and their top-heavy self-esteem.
A unique approach to women
Ta-Nehisi’s father had seven kids by four women. He easily fell in love and new feelings absorbed him as easy as falling off a log. The narrator mentioned that it seemed whenever a woman smiled his way, she’d already begun dividing her life into trimesters. The irony demonstrates the father’s attitude toward women, the way how he treated them in a joking manner.
What are you thinking boy?
It is a typical question, boy’s mother asked him when he brought home mediocre report cards: he is not working up to potential, needs to apply himself, discipline is a problem, and so on. It literally drew his Ma crazy. She asked him where was his head and what was he thinking. Ta-Nehisi left these questions without answer, well, at least for his mother but in his thoughts he had the answer. “I am thinking of Sunday waffles and Morning Star. I am grieving for Lynn Minmei, apatosaurs, Tom Landry, and Cowboy blue. I am staring three desks over and dreaming of Brenda Neil, dancing in a pink and white gown”. As we can see, the boy is thinking about everything, except studying and this vivid irony is the best proof of it.
Best student ever
This statement is an irony itself because Ta-Nehisi wasn’t a good student and had issues with discipline. He slept through French class, dreaming of pencil fights and paper football, was blessed with Latin, but spent most of his time talking out of turn and finding excuses to leave his seat. Studying process was like a torture for the boy because he didn’t know if it was what he wanted to do and if he needed this knowledge at all. The irony shows boy’s attitude to studying and describes his studying process.
