After Benjamin is born a 70-year-old man—to the shock of his parents and the hospital staff—his father Roger Button takes him home. On their way home, as they discuss how Roger will refer to Benjamin, Roger makes a biblical allusion, as seen in the following passage:
His son took the hand trustingly. “What are you going to call me, dad?” he quavered as they walked from the nursery—“just ‘baby’ for a while? till you think of a better name?” Mr. Button grunted.
“I don’t know,” he answered harshly. “I think we’ll call you Methuselah.”
Roger says “harshly” that he and his wife will refer to Benjamin as “Methuselah,” an allusion to the oldest character in the Bible. (In Genesis, he is recorded as having lived for 969 years.) This is clearly an example of verbal irony as Roger does not actually plan on calling his son that—he is making a sarcastic joke from a place of anger and confusion. He was expecting a normal baby and now feels burdened by having a 70-year-old newborn, as it will negatively affect his reputation. Roger is used to being a well-respected member of upper-class Baltimore society and is frustrated that Benjamin is jeopardizing his status.
This moment also shows how Roger is not a very supportive or caring parent. Benjamin’s earnest question—“What are you going to call me, dad?”—along with his “quavering” voice shows how vulnerable he is. That Roger responds with a harsh comment demonstrates that he cares more about his reputation than his child.
In an example of dramatic irony, Hildegarde tells Benjamin during their courtship that she is specifically drawn to him because of his mature age, as seen in the following passage:
“You’re just the romantic age,” she continued—“fifty. Twentyfive is too worldly-wise; thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is—oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love fifty.”
Fifty seemed to Benjamin a glorious age. He longed passionately to be fifty.
“I’ve always said,” went on Hildegarde, “that I’d rather marry a man of fifty and be taken care of than marry a man of thirty and take care of him.”
This is an example of dramatic irony, as both readers and Benjamin know that he is not a 50-year-old man who will continue to become more mature over time, but a 20-year-old man who will continue to become younger over the course of his relationship with Hildegarde. The narrator captures this irony when they describe how Benjamin agrees with Hildegarde that 50 is a “glorious age” and how he “longed passionately” to be 50 years old.
There is another layer of irony here, which is Hildegarde’s desire to marry an older man because she would “rather marry a man of fifty and be taken care of than marry a man of thirty and take care of him.” Of course, as Benjamin ages in reverse, there does come a point where he is 30 and she must take care of him. Ultimately, though, she leaves for Italy, effectively ending their relationship in order to avoid these caretaking responsibilities.
