Irate Ira: Good guy, bad guy?

So, onto Ira.  Someone brought up in class yesterday that Ira is a good guy, who is unfairly mocked.  I'd like to challenge that definition.  When Ira and Nathan are at Goldstine's house, Nathan hears a lot of Ira's sordid history.  Ira, long ago, had told Nathan that he had been beat up by guys in the army who called him a "Jew bastard" (48).  Nathan and we the readers had felt bad for Ira.  Here's a passage from chapter one:

"Hours later Ira got ambushed in the dark and wound up in the hospital.  At best he could diagnose the pains that began to develop while he was working at the record factory, they were from the damage caused by that savage beating.  Now he was always pulling a muscle or spraining a joint - his ankle, his wrist, his knee, his neck - and often as not from doing virtually nothing, no more than stepping off the bus coming home or reaching across the counter for the sugar bowl in the diner where he went to eat" (49).

From this passage, we all sympathize with Ira.  But then, we learn Ira didn't tell the whole story.  The reason the army men beat up Ira is because he tried to drown one of their comrades and then almost killed another who tried to save him.  Yes, the man, called "Butts" came at Ira with a knife, but then Ira went crazy and tried to kill him, way after the threat was over, and then wouldn't let others save Butts when obviously Butts had learned his lesson.  It's not OK to kill a man just because they wronged you.  Goldstine calls Ira a "crazy fucking homicidal nut" (98).

Later on, in another passage, more is revealed about Ira's dangerous side:  "Ira knew his own nature.  He knew that he was physically way out of scale and that this made him a dangerous man.  He had the rage in him, and the violence, and standing six and a half feet tall, he had the means.  He knew he needed his Ira-tamers - knew he needed all his teachers, knew he needed a kid like you [Nathan] ... But after I Married a Communist appeared, he shed the finishing school education, and he reclaimed the Ira you never saw, who beat the shit out of guys in the army, the Ira who, as a boy starting out on his own, used the shovel he dug with to protect himself against those Italian guys.  Wielded his work tool as a weapon.  His whole life was a struggle not to pick up that shovel.  But after her book, Ira set out to become his own uncorrected first self" (123).

How do you explain these different versions of Ira?  Is he the good, misunderstood, unfairly criticized man we all originally thought him to be?  Or are some of the plights in his life of his own making, and he is not necessarily the hero we thought him to be?  Or, is he a product of his environment, and of the teachers he has had over the years? Is he really his own self?

Comments

[Brett N]

Another instance of the two sides of Ira come out at the party in chapter 4. For the most part, Ira keeps to himself the whole time, even going back to the kitchen to wash dishes with the cook. It is when he says goodbye to the Grants that his peaceful side goes away. Without being provoked, Ira starts screaming at Mr. Grant for having dinner with a Nazi member. We see this alot, when Ira lets his opinion be know, no matter what the situation is. He does not care what the circumstances are, so he just voices his strong opinoins sometimes at innopportune times like this one.

[Kirsten H.]

I think that Ira has just lived a really rough life. When a person has troubles in their past it haunts them, no matter how hard they try to forget. Ira tries, he "knew" that he was dangerous and he tries to stand up for what he thinks is right but it just doesn't always turn out that way. Especially now that we've reached the end, we know he has a violent past but he tried to keep it under wraps as best he could.