Irony and Randomness

Often we call events ironic because they seem somehow unsuited to the path that led up to them. It's ironic that Oedipus ended up sleeping with his mother and killing his father because he thought he was escaping that fate. There is a tension, but not a contradiction, between one's intended goal and how things turn out:

"If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?" (Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat").

But is it really more absurd to be drowned having come this far to contemplate sand and trees than it would have been to perish somewhere else--somewhere more stately or dignified, somewhere more befitting the arduous journey that led up to it? Or is any place one might die a 'random' one simply because it's a particular one? Just about any demise is somehow oddly humble; oddly particular. No way of ending up, perhaps, can ever match the grandeur of our intentions.

If it is as 'random,' as unexpected, to die after a long and arduous journey as to die after a short and easy one, nothing is random at all. Or rather, nothing is more 'random,' more particular, than anything else. Everything simply is.

See also, "Musee des Beaux Arts."