Contradiction And Irony In Tin Winston's Novel Breath

Often, making jokes at another person’s expense can inevitably cause guilt and even embarrassment. This message is reflected in the excerpt from Tin Winston’s novel Breath. In the story, a boy named Bruce Pike manages to pull off a prank with his older friend, Ivan Loon, only at the expense of a bystander woman. At a riverbank, Ivan Loon acts as if he is drowning, causing the women to react anxiously, signaling Bruce to go rescue him. However, instead of feeling gleeful about the prank, Bruce begins feeling more guilty about his inappropriate actions, worrying a poor woman for the sole purpose of entertainment. With the use of contrast/contradiction and irony, the author successfully represents the complex response of the narrator to the events that unfolded at the riverbank, as he begins to realize the effects of his actions.
Particularly, the contrast between Bruce's feelings about the prank is directly told by the author. Although at first the narrator executes the prank without considering the woman’s feelings, he begins to “feel more guilt than glee,” (Winston 55) after causing the unnecessary panic. In fact, he sympathizes with the woman, stating that “it was embarrassing to see this grown woman standing there in her clinging dress with her dimpled knees and chubby legs all muddy,” (Winston 60). The narrator begins to feel embarrassment towards the woman who they carlessley tricked. Buce puts himself into the woman’s shoes, imagining how humiliated they may have caused the woman to feel. While before, the narrator does not consider the woman's emotions, the narrator starts to feel more and more guilty about his actions, stating that he “felt sympathy” towards her. Above all, this displays how the author used the technique of contrast and contradiction to represent the complex response of the