Religious hypocrisy
This novel covers an important irony which spans the whole of human religion from the dawn of time until now: When religious families use religious language to sugarcoat a serious psychological dysfunction in the home, a form of hypocrisy occurs that scars the child's mentality going forward. This happens as the novel indicates, because the children have an inherent loyalty to God and parents which is confused and perplexed by parents who use God as a weapon against their child. That tends to do what it does in this novel—it gives Pattyn a deeply traumatic experience of personal shame.
Rules and rebellion
Pattyn is not an evil child, nor does she foster feelings of hatred. She is not trying to break rules when she resists her father's abuse. Of course, to him, this seems like dishonoring one's parents, something fiercely prohibited in Mormonism, but in reality, she is only acknowledging that his own behavior has purged him of honor. He is abusive and indulgent, often doing his worst damages in blackout stupors so that when he wakes up, he barely remembers the sins he has committed. With this toxic example of authority and structure, Pattyn spins the way of the ironic opposite, toward freedom and rebellion.
The shame of animal nature
Ironically, Pattyn's religious family instills in her deep shame about her own body and animal nature. For one thing, they drown their daughters in feelings of self-disappointment by suggesting that they are not as valuable as the son they could one day have. This makes the girls ashamed to be girls, which is shaming their animal nature. Then, their sexualities are shamed. For Pattyn, this shame helps her to find the right partner before having sex, but it also causes intense suffering and extreme embarrassment that she never quite addresses, because it seems so normal to her. She is embarrassed to be a human being because of how she was parented, a truly remarkable irony.
The anti-father
This irony is important to see in two ways, from two different angles. The first is situational irony or circumstantial irony, and the second is drama. The fact that Pattyn's father hates all the women in his family is ironic, because he lives with seven women and zero other males. In other words, his entire substance as a character is that he is a hateful man. His violence is the exact opposite of the natural advantages that a father could provide. The dramatic irony is dramatic in a painful way, because the reader sees that Pattyn has never really seen a happy day in all her life. The drama of her life has prohibited her from experiencing confidence, joy, or self-esteem.
The allegory of hatred
This novel can be seen as an allegory akin to the heroic twist in Paradise Lost. With the abandonment of religion and authority, one asserts one's own sovereignty, but just as in Milton's epic poem, the Satanic hero must stake their independence with pride and wrath. In this novel, we see that exact process unfolding as the daughter grows from hating her own instincts and emotions because of religious shame and repression, all the way through the story of her growth and self-acceptance, to a point where she finally feels confident enough to stake a claim of her own in hatred; she hates her father for what he has done to her, an important step toward healing and forgiveness.
