The ending scene of “The Furnished Room” contains both situational irony and dramatic irony. The situational irony comes from the fact that, as the housekeeper reveals to Mrs. McCool, Eloise previously stayed in the furnished room that the young man rented. This is ironic, since the young man asks the housekeeper two different times if a young woman stayed there, and each time the housekeeper answers no, an answer that ultimately inspires the young man to take his own life out of hopelessness and despair. O. Henry saves this painful and ironic plot twist for the final lines of the story, when the housekeeper tells Mrs. McCool, “She’d a-been called handsome […] but for that mole she had a-growin’ by her left eyebrow.” Readers know from the young man’s description that Eloise had just such a mole.
The ending is also an example of dramatic irony, as readers are aware of the fact that, right as the housekeepers are discussing Eloise’s suicide, the young man has also just committed suicide in the same bed. The fact that the housekeepers are not aware of this but readers are makes this an example of dramatic irony. It also makes the young man’s death even more tragic, as readers realize that the housekeepers will likely cover up his death the same way that they covered up Eloise’s, erasing yet another story of a transient, low-income person in New York.
