Hugh Garner The Father Essay

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People do not always perceive situations in a way that gives them a good understanding.
They may think they understand, when they are in fact, quite ignorant to the situation. In the story “The Father” by Hugh Garner, Garner develops the idea that if a person does not, or does not want to understand a person and their situation, he may find that this causes him to develop poor relationships and drift apart from others.

With John, we learn right from the start he is not interested in an intimate relationship with his son, Johnny. He is asked, by his wife, to go to his son’s father-and-son banquet for boy scouts and “It was on the tip of his tongue to say, ‘Scout meeting! What do I look like?’" (1). Instead, he inquires about it. Only at the end to harshly accuse his son of being “too shy to ask his own father to go somewhere” (1). John does not understand this his son iis not just “only a twelve-year-old that wants to be left alone” (1). Johnny is a kid who needs a father in his life.

It is only John that has a tensious relationship with his son. The rest of the family gets along fine. His wife and children [quarrel] often, [nevertheless] there [is] no tension between them” (2). This is …show more content…

First, he goes up on the stage and makes a fool of himself raising his son’s hand in the air like an idiot. Then he stumbles back to his seat knocking “a vase of flowers and a couple plates... to the floor with a loud crash” (6). He plays this off like a joke not even realizing “[his] boy was sobbing silently” (6). At this point John still finds humor in this whole situation. He tries to tell his son “it was really nothing [and that] it'll be forgotten in a day or two”(7). All Johnny wanted was to be left alone and his father could not even do that, causing Johnny to go “running down the street”(7) It is not until this point that John realizes everything about his relationship with his son was his

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