"The Drunkard" - irony

"'My brave little man!' she said with her eyes shining. 'It was God did it that you were there. You were his gaurdian angle.'"

"The Drunkard" by Frank O'Connor contains a lot of irony. The main irony of the story is that the boy gets drunk instead of the dad. As the father is talking and ignoring his son, the boy drinks his father's beer. This is ironic because the reader does not expect the little boy to be drunk. It is also ironic because in the end the mother calls the boy a gaurdian angle instead of punishing him. That is not what I expected at all. The boy acts as a gaurdian angle because he stopped his father from drinking and makes a scene embarassing his father. This makes the father think twice about drinking and he gets up and goes to work the next day.