Spunk’s death at the hands of the circle-saw is an example of situational irony for a few different reasons. First, as Elijah notes on the very first page of the story, Spunk is the only employee at the saw-mill unafraid of the circle-saw:
“But that’s one thing Ah likes about Spunk Banks—he ain’t skeered of nothin’ on God’s green footstool—nothin’! He rides that log down at saw-mill jus’ like he struts ’round wid another man’s wife—jus’ don’t give a kitty. When Tes’ Miller got cut to giblets on that circle-saw, Spunk steps right up and starts ridin’. The rest of us was skeered to go near it.”
Here, Elijah describes how Spunk “ain’t skeered of nothin’,” including the circle-saw that all of the rest of the men are “skeered to go near” after a previous employee was killed while using it. It is therefore ironic that Spunk dies while using the saw, given his reputation for being unafraid of the deadly device.
Spunk’s death is also an example of situational irony because the story as a whole seems to set him as the victor—he killed Joe without a second thought and then escaped any punishment by the legal system. In many ways, Hurston suggests that Spunk is all-powerful and cannot be threatened by anything. That this supposedly invincible man is brought down by an inanimate object (and, in his mind, the interference of Joe’s ghost) is deeply ironic. This ending is likely Hurston’s way of suggesting that masculine bravado is, above all, a performance, and that no man is invulnerable.
