girl! Poor Minnie!"

Another moment of irony occurs when the gang is trying to force Will Mayes into the car. The barber, who has defended Will from the onset and who leaves his barber shop specifically to try to defend him, actually engages in the violence against him:

The others expelled their breath in a dry hissing and struck him with random blows and he whirled and cursed them, and swept his manacled hands across their faces and slashed the barber upon the mouth, and the barber struck him also.

In a desperate act of survival, Will hits the barber, and this is provocation enough for the barber to strike back in violence against the man he'd actually shown up to protect. Additionally, when they all get into the car, Will pleads with Henry to stay by uttering his name twice: "Mr. Henry." Sadly, the one man with the potential to save Will bails out of the car—when his entire original intention was to save Will from certain death.

Thus, Henry's actions are also ironic. He leaves the barber shop full of heroism, determined to give Will a chance to survive the group looking to avenge Miss Minnie's "honor":

The barber wiped the razor carefully and swiftly, and put it away, and ran to the rear, and took his hat from the wall. "I'll be back as soon as I can," he said to the other barbers. "I can't let—" He went out, running.

Yet in the end, he seems more interested in saving himself and makes a cowardly exit from the car.

There is intense irony in this short story where an innocent black man is lynched cruelly by a group of white men for a crime that he is accused of by a woman who is just trying to relieve the tedium of her life. Firstly, there is irony in the way that the white men respond to the charge that Miss Minnie brings. It becomes very quickly evident that issues such as whether Will Mayes actually committed the crime or not become secondary compared to what is seen as a challenge to white supremacy. Note how McLendon responds to questions about ascertaining what actually occurred:

Happen? What the hell difference does it make? Are you going to let the black sons get away with it until one really does it?

Secondly, there is irony in the ending of this short story, where the characters of Miss Minnie and McLendon are further explored. Although it is never directly stated that Miss Minnie made up her charge, the way in which others gossip about her clearly suggests this. It is therefore strongly suggested that she invented the story as an attempt to relieve her frustrated life. However, the ending shows that this has not changed, and as a result she becomes hysterical. In the same way, McLendon, when he returns home that night, is shown to be physically abusive towards his wife. His violence against Will Mayes is just shown to be a way that he expresses his own frustrations, that remain unassauged by the lynching. Both the acts of lying and then of murder are shown to have been fruitless in producing any real change in the principal characters.