In an example of situational irony, almost all the people who attend Harvey’s funeral speak of him cruelly and disrespectfully rather than honor his life and legacy, as is expected at funerals. This is especially ironic because unlike everyone at the funeral, Harvey was a well-known and well-regarded artist who, on the East Coast, would have been grieved by countless people in (and outside of) the art world. In fact, he even has a palm leaf on his casket, a symbol for his extraordinary achievement as an artist.
The irony of the people of Sand City denigrating this gifted artist at his own funeral comes across in the following passage, in which Steavens expresses shock over the funeral-goers’ behavior:
The letters were swimming before Steavens’s eyes. Was it possible that these men did not understand, that the palm on the coffin meant nothing to them? The very name of their town would have remained for ever buried in the postal guide had it not been now and again mentioned in the world in connection with Harvey Merrick’s.
Here, Steavens expresses his confusion and indignation over the fact that the palm leaf on Harvey’s coffin “meant nothing” to the townspeople and notes how, if it weren’t for Harvey, no one would have heard of Sand City (as the name of the town “would have remained for ever buried in the postal guide”). Through this situational irony, Cather is making the point that the people of Sand City have their priorities all wrong. Rather than negatively judging Harvey for the ways he did not “fit in” with the community, they should be celebrating him for becoming successful on his own terms.
