Religion
Religious faith comes in for quite an ironic beating in this story partially set during the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. "The priest presiding over my wedding was half-starved, half-frozen and wearing rags, but he was resourceful; he’d blessed a chunk of moldy bread from breakfast to serve as a communion wafer." The ironic dimension here is directed to steadfast observance of religious ritual. The faithful somehow find a way to commit to this seemingly purposeless rite of devotion. This is true even as all signs—starvation and moldy bread—indicate religious devotion to a god lacking either the power or moral inclination to intervene and end such widespread mindless suffering.
Fear
At one point in the story Nazi planes are flying overhead and dropping bombs which causes members of a family to rush to their basement for safety. One member of the family, however, is not so quick to seek such shelter. “What is scarier? The darkness or a bomb falling on your head?” she is asked by her mother. This question poses one of the essential ironies of war. Irrational fears and phobias that seem insurmountable suddenly become easy to surmount in the face of more rational fear of death. The horrors of war, in other words, ironically have the power to make people less afraid.
Autism and Empathy
One of the major characters in the present-day section of the story is a young boy with autism. In narration, his mother rages against the common portrayal of autistic characters by Hollywood as lacking empathy simply because they do not interact socially like most people. With recognition and appreciation of the great irony, she insists her son's "heart is immense" and that the especially rare hug from such a child is the ultimate expression of empathy.
Fascism's Origins
There has long been an unspoken understanding that one should not compare any modern-day situation to Nazi Germany under Hitler. This was a mistaken approach to moderation based on the worst excesses of the regime. "It started with a small group of people harassing and vandalizing and desecrating." The irony is that the nationally approved Nazi genocide started out with a bunch of thugs committing hate crimes ignored as mere misdemeanors.
The Plot
The entire plot of the novel revolves around the greatest irony of the story. The narrative focuses on a specific family over multiple generations. That family comes into being based upon a profoundly ironic case of mistaken identity that will ultimately be revealed only at the story's conclusion.
