The name irony
"Come fortune" is an ironic name for many reasons. Does the name imply that he should go out and fight for a fortune, or does it imply that fortune will come regardless? Technically, in his life, it represents the internal dilemma he feels about his self-worth. Since he puts his stock in his own success, he becomes bound to fate, because there are many problems with successful lives too.
The ironic exile
He didn't know he'd never see China again when he left. He thought he would go for a season, into the dark new unknown of a new country, and then he fully expected to return to his parents, to thunderous applause no doubt, with degree in hand, so his parents would finally love him. But then the Communists won, and he was ironically exiled from his family.
Ironic Theresa
The only irony greater than being unintentionally separated from the very parents he sought to impress is the irony of his almost immediately finding his only other family, his sister Theresa. They find each other in the park in New York. Talk about chances! And he gets a new life from her. Like the hand of God, she gives him hope, family, a path forward, and a community to help him orient himself in the difficult onslaught of immigrant life.
The irony of family loyalties
When Ralph decides that "family" is bringing him down, does he mean Helen and Theresa, who have suffered alongside him, who have supported him all this time? No, secretly, he means his parents who were stingy with their approval, but he allows himself to use that as emotional license to be badly behaved in his personal life. He could represent an asset to the family, because after all, he seems to be a wicked smart business man, but he is not happy or healthy, and he can't see that.
The irony of the cultural change
Now, here's a clever artistic irony. Imagine Ralph's life as a line on paper. Where does the line start, and where does the line end? The reader can see that Ralph's transformation took him through the political spectrum. As a child, he was Chinese by culture, and he was obsessed with performing his sacred obligation for his fate and for his family, and by the end, he is a rich capitalist, whose life has veered so far in the other direction that he literally harms his actual family, in the same lifetime. That's quite an ironic reversal, and it points to another spectrum—the spectrum of emotional health, which is not determined by economics but by mental mindfulness.
