Irony Out of Habit

Out of all the stories we read In Vancouver Short stories, Broken Teeth was my favourite, and as I'm writing this I'm still trying to figure out why. It's not particularily uplifting. I think it's because it points out a strange habit that we probably all possess; the act of acting out of habit itself. But more than that it was the tone the author used to convey this habit. The irony at the end of the story was beautiful, and yet kind of twisted and almost dark in a way. The daughter's response to her mother account of abuse, which was nothing short of horrific, was so strange, as if she didn't hear what she had just said. It actually evoked for me this strange imaginary situation of a terminally ill person who reveals to a loved one that she will probably die soon, and the response of that loved one is to burst out laughing.

I particularily was fond of the ironic note that the story ended on, with the mother admonishing her daughter to pay her respects to her grandfather, who she had effectively made a case not to respect him during the story. To me this undescored the fact that so much of what we do is out of habit