Sexual orientation and mystery
The relationship between Bong Bong and Frisquito seems homo-erotic to Bong Bong's sister. She thinks maybe he is gay and hiding a homosexual relationship from his family, or perhaps he is gay in a way that he is even hiding from himself. That mystery is a use of dramatic irony for analyzing the complexity of sexual orientation and social acceptance. On one hand, perhaps it is moral to be one's self, but on the other hand, is this family really prepared to support Bong Bong? The mystery is preserved through the novel.
America as irony
To say the least, America is different than Manila. Antonio, "Bong Bong"'s arrival in San Francisco greets him with a landscape completely foreign to him; the enormous cities of the Bay. He does not know what to do with his life in such a brand new setting, and he lies about his education so his parents continue to fund his adventure of America. As dramatic irony, American life and culture is offered for consideration. The outsider's perspective might remind the reader of de Tocqueville.
Charmaine's ironic moment
Bong Bong spends all his money on his time with Charmaine, but they don't sleep together when they can. Charmaine ends up being like a noose around Bong Bong's neck because all he wants to do is read, but when he is forced to move in with her (after spending basically every day together outside the home), he realizes that she does not ever cease demanding his attention. Charmaine is a voice of irony in the text because she believes she is attracting Bong Bong in one way, but when she realizes the way he experiences her, she accuses him of schizophrenic insanity.
Paranoia and irony
To be paranoid is inherently ironic because it depends on conspiracy against one's self by one's community, but it does not stop there. The paranoid individual begins suspecting that life itself is conspiring against them, and the depths of that insanity are a field of experience which is largely unknown to those who have never seen it. Charmaine realizes what it is so that the reader can understand what they might have been missing do to dramatic irony. When they consider her accusations that he is hyper-paranoid, there is a dramatic reanalysis where they must consider for themselves whether their experience of his character seemed those ways to them.
Reality and irony
Bong Bong has a complicated experience of self. His binocular experience of life both in his homelands and in America, the ultimate comparison and contrast for him, and in his mysterious experience of self which makes him markedly feminine and seemingly homosexual, but in a repressed way. By the time he has a lengthy relationship with a woman, the irony is that they are not deeply connected in any sexual way, but they are connected in a deeply tantric way. The woman discloses to the reader that Bong Bong is having an experience of reality which is (in her opinion) warped by a private, hyper-tantric experience of self.
