Misguided Priorities In Hugh Garner's The Father

Walking down the street with his boy Johnny, John tries to make conversation with his boy but finds it hard. John knows very little about his son and the barrier in between them is big enough to block out any insight John could have gained into Johnny's life. He has always prioritized himself over others, wanted to feel good and look good in the public’s eyes. John does not look at the end goal of his priorities, how it may affect his family or what he is missing out on and the idea of losing the relationship he had with his family slipped past him. This short story, “The Father” which was wrote by Hugh Garner focuses on the misguided priorities made by John and how it affected his life along with his family's. The story is focused on one event which John is more than less forced to spend time with his boy and in those moments, he learns that he knows nothing about his own child. Garner does an excellent job of using irony to strengthen the story and the points in which he tries to get across in his writing and it emphasizes the points to the reader.
Misguided priorities over a long period of time lead to a very poor quality of life, they can ruin family relationships, affect a life in a negative way and can blind the consequences of the situation from the eyes of a misguided person. The idea of the short term gains and the ideas that do not …show more content…
While John was self absorbed with his short term gains, his son was doing many other things that included making a Cree mask for scouts, John “had never seen the boy making the mask.” (71) The times John had avoided his son, he always brushed it off, John saw it as “he was too preoccupied with other things.”