Young Man on 6th Avenue

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Setting and Irony
The setting of the story, “Young Man on 6th Avenue”, in Manhattan, New York, in the late 1930s. Featured in the story is a sprightly young man sauntering through the city, confusing everyone on the footway with his intoxicating confidence and energy. The author employs flashback to suit the narration of the story from the protagonist’s youthful age to the old age. He also uses irony throughout the text to base the reader’s interpretation, emphasize the central idea, and to deepen the meaning of the story.
Definitively, the irony is a literary device which denotes the incongruity or contradiction between what actually happens and what had been expected. Every reader of the Halliday’s “Young Man on 6th Avenue” would expect the protagonist to rejoice his life journey in the long run, but that does not happen when he finally hit 75 years of age (Halliday, 63). In fact, what follows negates readers’ expectation, necessitating them to stop, for a while, and think about the trajectory of the story. At 75, the senior man recalls his life, only to understand that his pinnacle days are far behind him. Nevertheless, he has to live with the veracity that he cannot revive his youthful days and be the energetic young shot he used to be in the 1930’s. His pleasure in the big apple is gone. The women no longer look at him with the admiration. So, instead of being happy about his old memories, the protagonist regrets having led a wasteful life during youthful days, and this is ironic.

The life of uncontrollable motion and impulsivity blinded the protagonist’s sacred ability to realize the significance of time. As a result, he suffers pain. His friends have left him, his wife has passed on, and the children have also bolted the confines their home, leaving him lonely. In a nutshell, the entire story is ironic; the first scene progressively builds the reader’s expectation that the protagonist would be a happy man in the long run. However, that does not happen as the man ends up so unhappy with events unfolding in his life.

Work Cited
Halliday, Mark. Young Man on 6th Avenue. 1995.