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Irony
Explanation and Analysis—Two Hundred Miles:
Troy is a known exaggerator and unreliable narrator of his own life. Wilson explores the drawbacks of this trait through dramatic irony in Act 1: Scene 4, when the audience realizes that Lyons is no more sure than they (the audience members) are regarding when to believe Troy's biographical stories:
TROY: I got up from the creek and walked on down to Mobile. I was through with farming. Figured I could do better in the city. So I walked the two hundred miles to Mobile.
LYONS: Wait a minute . . . you ain’t walked no two hundred miles, Pop. Ain’t nobody gonna walk no two hundred miles. You talking about some walking there.
BONO: That’s the only way you got anywhere back in them days.
LYONS: Shhh. Damn if I wouldn’t have hitched a ride with somebody!
Lyons immediately clocks that 200 miles is an absurd distance to walk. His first assumption is that Troy is lying, a suspicion that is founded in reason. After all, the very first line in the play is Bono's admonition that, "Troy, you ought to stop that lying!" Lying for dramatic effect is part of Troy's personality. It takes Bono's confirmation that "That's the only way you got anywhere back in them days" to convince Lyons that Troy did in fact escape his father's abusive household at 14 by walking 200 miles to Mobile to start over. The absurdity is not Troy's claim, but rather the fact that he had to endure such hardship when he was so young.
Troy often uses humorous exaggeration as an emotional shield. Bragging and fibbing can give him a kind of swagger within a life that is more modest than he wants for himself. He may collect garbage instead of playing professional baseball, but he can enjoy telling everyone that he would have been better than all the rest if he had only been allowed into the league. In this moment, however, his unreliability as a narrator makes him all the more tragic. Lyons and the audience both need Bono to confirm the real tribulation that he endured when he was young. Without an intermediary to back him up, the assumption even Troy's son defaults to is that the man is making himself out to be more special and heroic than he actually is. Troy's tendency to self-aggrandize thus backfires on him, destroying his son's chance to know or respect him on his own merits.
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