The Dead Father
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''The Dead Father'' is a
post-modernist Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
novel by
author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
Donald Barthelme Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the ''Houston Post'', was managing ...
published in
1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...
by
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer ...
. The book relates the journey of a vaguely defined entity that symbolizes
fatherhood A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. An adoptive fathe ...
, hauled by a small group of people as the plot unravels through narratives, anecdotes, dialogues, reflexions and allegories presented to the reader through the tools and constructions of
postmodern literature Postmodern literature is a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narrator, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues. This sty ...
, in which the author excelled as a
short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...
writer. Chapter 17 includes an adapted version of a previously published short story, "A Manual for Sons", that is much in the style and character of the novel.


Characters

* The Dead Father - the eponymous character, a godlike, incarnated image of Fatherhood, being hauled towards a redemptory destination. * Thomas - the archetype of the son, a leader of the expedition. * Julie - a co-leader of the expedition, a lover of Thomas, a ''female son''. * Emma - another woman and another lover, in many respects, another Julie. * Edmund - one of the hauling children, a drunk. * The Wends - a numerous population of self-fathering indigenes, whose land the Dead Father and his sons are passing through. They are estranged to the notion of fatherhood and prejudiced against it.


Plot

The "Dead Father" is being hauled with a cable by some of his children, across lands and under all weather conditions, towards a goal of an emancipatory nature but that is left mysterious throughout most of the story, to be revealed, at the end of the novel, to be his burial spot. The story, in a genre typical of the author, does not follow a conventional plot structure, but evolves through a series of revelations, seemingly-unrelated stories, anecdotes, dialogues, descriptive figments, surreal snapshots of reality, personal rendering of the characters' impressions or recordings. The whole of chapter 22 is a stream of bizarre, deconstructed sentences, as if muttered by a narrator too imbued by the urgency of his thoughts to give attention to proper grammar, giving the impression of a deep penetration in the character's consciousness. The plot is thus, more than in other novels, a support for the themes explored. The text is also noted for its word play, irony, absurdist humor, that are abundant in the author's short stories.


Themes

''The Dead Father'' is a synthesis of concepts that define fatherhood, the latter being itself called to refer to other, vaguely defined, notions, such as
creation Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing * Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it * Creationism, the belief tha ...
and
procreation Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – "offspring" – are produced from their "parent" or parents. Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual org ...
, in their widest sense. It also assumes a more concrete human appearance, both in its very nature (discoursing and having human feelings such as jealousy, hate, pleasure, pride, etc.) and in more mundane forms (having brows and gray hairs, wearing clothes, a belt, a sword, etc.) It is, at the same time, clearly not a human figure (having gigantic dimensions, being hauled, this thanks to being articulated, having a mechanical leg, etc.). This balance of contradictions culminates in the notion that he/it is alive and dead at the same time. The book opens with the mystifying sentence:
The Dead Father's head. The main thing is, his eyes are open.
Another rhetorical juxtaposition is to present this entity to external enquirers sometimes as "''a'' Dead Father" (to the children), some other times as "''the'' Dead Father" (to the Wends). This continuous play on the Dead Father's genuine nature is one of the thread of the novel. With various characters questioning its identity and being quickly satisfied with elusive answers, the reader equally comes to accept the Dead Father as an incarnated metaphor for notions of Fatherhood, partly rooted in the subconscious, partly in the immediate understanding of a biological father. He clearly also evokes
God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
and, for some analysts, is seen as an allegory of
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
. The novel gives an approach to the theme of father-son relationships, probably reflecting largely the author's own attitude toward his own father, expressing the frustration of a creative son in the eye of a demanding father:
A son can never become, in the fullest sense, a father.
It also addresses the more general issue of the creative or procreative process. It captures deep truths by the trick of circling them with opposite statements:
Wrong, the Dead Father said gaily. Wrong, but close. Even older than that, but also younger. Having it both ways is a thing I like.
They thus strike deeply the reader whose own understanding is left to resonate with that angle that their own mood or personal history is more fit to catch. A contradiction that pervades the entire story is the energetic abilities of the Dead Father on the one hand, who is free of his own movements and a master of destruction, able to slay living animals on one occasion or immaterial concepts on another, and his need of being hauled on the other hand, namely towards that goal that he awaits himself although he is unable to clearly identify what it is. Another, parallel concept is the awe and respect that the Dead Father exercises on his children at the same time as his pathetic surrender to their demands of dispossessing him and the distaste he evokes in them. This provides another figurative description of the feelings of those created towards their creator. This technique is applied repeatedly in various other occasions, providing insights into complex issues of human relationships.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dead Father, The 1975 American novels Postmodern novels Farrar, Straus and Giroux books