“Under the Radar”
A major turning point in this story is a raccoon in the middle of the road being caught by surprise by the sight of the car owned by the couple at the story’s center. Eventually the animal become roadkill after getting hit by another vehicle. In one of the author’s darkest experiments in irony, the husband is destined to very soon find himself in the same circumstances as the raccoon with his wife behind the wheel.
"Rock Springs”
Both members of the couple at the center of this story are fortunate to recognize the irony of the circumstances in which they find themselves. In fact, in this case, the irony produced by juxtaposition produces laughter instead of vehicular homicide:
“…we both stood there behind the cab in the dark, laughing at the gold mine in the desert”
“Winterkill”
Traditionally, the deer—or stag—has been universally utilized as a symbol of masculinity. In this story, a wheelchair-bound character having issues with masculinity sets out on a mission to catch a fish, but winds up hooking a drowned deer which becomes the object of ridicule. The traditional symbol of masculinity has ironically transformed into yet another symbol of the character’s loss of masculinity.
“Communist”
This story presents a welcome relief from the influence of Hemingway that hunting or killing animals is a symbol of the truest expression of masculinity. The narrator tells of a Hemingwayesque “man’s man” determined to make a man out the sensitive son of his new girlfriend. The story climaxes with the transition from boy to man ironically taking place with the moment when the narrator is most feeling the desire for violence and shows the maturity to reject the opportunity.
“Privacy”
This is a story which relentlessly builds toward its comically ironic twist ending. It is the first-person account of a husband who gains increasingly voyeuristic pleasure from peeking into the window of a distant neighboring apartment where a woman undresses in front of an open window every night. His fantasy of this beautiful young woman is fueled by the fact that his wife is obliviously asleep in the same room from which he peeps. The irony is shock to his system when he finally sees her while close enough to register details one day as she is entering the apartment building: “she was old. Possibly she was seventy or even older.”
