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Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—No Stealing:
In Chapter 10, Richard gets hired for one of his many jobs, this time by a movie theater as a ticket-taker. Richard knows that he has kept himself out of legal trouble, so he thinks he will get the job; however, situational irony is in play:
My chances for getting the job were good; I had no past record of stealing or violating the laws. [...] The boss man warned me:
"Now, look, I'll be honest with you if you be honest with me. I don't know who's honest around this joint and who isn't. But if you are honest, then the rest are bound to be. All tickets will pass through your hands. There can be no stealing unless you steal."
Richard tells the proprietor that he has never stolen, and as above, Richard is only hired because he doesn't steal. But in fact Richard is only taking the job because he intends to steal; he applied for the job in the first place because a bell-boy at his previous hotel job told him it would be easy to steal by reselling tickets for a profit. This is thus an ironic situation: Richard is hired to steal because he (supposedly) does not steal. This situation also shows Richard's developing system of morality. He begins to feel that he is allowed to hurt, or steal from, White people, because they do not live on equal moral ground: "Stealing was not a violation of my ethics, but of [the boss's]; I felt that things were rigged in his favor and any action I took to circumvent his scheme of life was justified. Yet I had not convinced myself." So while the situation seems ironic on its face, in Richard's view—at least for the moment—he is being totally logical in an immoral world.
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