Beyond My Fathers Shadow Summary

People in society either grow up with a father figure or without a father figure in their life. Those whose father’s do decide to stay in their child’s life have no idea how big of an impact they leave and it’s usually a good impact depending on the relationship between the father and child. A father is not there just to be a part of the child’s life, but to actually give some sort of guidance for the child. This is proven in “Beyond My Fathers Shadow” (Gordon Chambers), “The Boat” (Alistair MacLeod) and “Cages” (Guy Vanderhaeghe). At the beginning of “Beyond My Fathers Shadow”, the relationship between father and son is not great and the child hates his father but as he gets older he starts to understand why his father did the things he did. The main character says so himself that “Daddy never wanted me to be his silhouette; he wanted me to be a man” (Chambers 2). This quote in a way states that the son finally understands what the father was trying to do. His father only wanted the best for him in life, but the son just would not understand and so when the second child came the father put all his efforts into him so at least one of his kids would have a good life. Another example that proves the thesis is “He’s a

At the beginning of the text, the father beats Gene for throwing a dart right in the middle of Billy’s forehead (Vanderhaeghe 113). However, his father was not actually mad at Gene, he only did it because he misbehaved. It shows that his father does not want his sons to end up reckless and disobedient like the other children in town, he wants his sons to be good and mannered people. This also gives off the idea that the father was not raised the way he wished to be raised and so he is raising his kids the way he wanted to be