Why is the ending of the story 'A Letter to God' considered deeply ironic?
Options
Lencho's crop was destroyed by the rain he had eagerly prayed for, showing nature's cruelty.
Lencho suspected the post office employees of theft and called them a 'bunch of crooks', when they were actually the ones who had collected money to help him.
The postmaster decided to keep thirty pesos for himself and his employees as a processing fee for delivering the letter.
Lencho lost his faith in God after receiving only seventy pesos instead of the hundred pesos he had requested.
Explanation
The irony lies in the stark contrast between expectation and reality. The postmaster and his employees acted out of pure kindness to keep Lencho's faith in God alive by collecting seventy pesos from their own pockets. However, instead of being grateful to them, Lencho assumed that God had sent the full hundred pesos and that the post office employees had stolen the missing thirty pesos, calling them a 'bunch of crooks'. Option A describes situational misfortune but not the central situational irony of human behavior. Option C is factually incorrect as the employees did not keep any money. Option D is incorrect because Lencho's faith in God remained unshaken; he blamed the humans, not God.