The scene culminates when Mick and Peter Crowley steer Larry out of the pub and attempt to reassure him that he’s going to be all right, leading Larry to think, as a dry aside to the reader, that he “never met two men who knew less about the effects of drink.” Again, Larry believes the extent of his knowledge to be far greater than it really is: if anyone knows about the effects of drink, it’s these two! In a textbook example of dramatic irony, the reader is encouraged to smile at the child’s naivety. It looked as if he had never tried lemonade.” What’s comically obvious to readers is that Larry perceives his father as the naïve one when-of course-Mick knows how lemonade tastes, and Larry clearly doesn’t get that his father drinks beer not for its taste but for its effects. When Larry takes a sip of Mick’s pint while Mick is ignoring him, he’s “astonished that could even drink such stuff. ![]() The story’s comedy comes primarily from Larry’s outrageous misperceptions of the world, which demonstrate that he’s still fundamentally a child. ![]() By emphasizing Larry’s comedic, naive misperceptions, O’Connor underscores the tragedy at the story’s heart: that Larry is a child thrust into a disturbing situation that he's not mature enough to understand, making him lose his innocence too young. At the same time, however, the reader is also invited to remember that Larry’s innocence has been exploited by his mother, who has (unfairly) burdened him with the responsibility of preventing Mick from drinking, and disregarded by Mick, who takes him to the pub even though he’s underage. The story is essentially a tragedy told as a farce the reader is invited to laugh at the “hilarious” behavior of the drunken Larry, an innocent who’s just had his first taste of alcohol. ![]() Through Larry Delaney, O’Connor explores the interrelationship between innocence and experience.
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