Family Unit- Blog 3

The Drunkard by Frank O'Connor is my favorite short story of this unit because of the humor and irony that were present. In a household where a alcoholic resides, the affects on the child are more than one can imagine. In this case, the 9 year old son watched as his father goes through phases of being drunk and then not drinking and realizes that he likes his father more when he is in his phase of not drinking. When taken to his fathers' close friend's funeral, the little boy drinks the alcohol that his father has. The humor comes in when the boy thinks, "I was astonished that he could even drink such stuff. It looked as if he had never tried lemonade" [Perrine, 347]. The boy thought that the taste was disgusting and was surprised as to why his father had not tried any other drink (hahaha). Clearly we know he had, but it was the feeling that caused the father to drink, not the taste. The irony comes in when we think about the boy, son of a drunkard, getting drunk himself. The boy was on a mission to try to get his father to stop drinking and he himself does what he was supposed to get someone else to stop doing. The thing is that it actually worked though! His father was so ashamed about the incident that he probably never drank again!