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Who’s your daddy?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday is Father’s Day, which seems like a good time to ruminate on fathers in literature.
As a rule, dads in novels are usually not going to be real sweethearts. It’s the nature of narrative— you need conflict to get it going, and if you’re writing about a father-child relationship, it’s easy to make the dad a tyrant who must somehow be overcome.
But when I started thinking about the most memorable fathers in fiction, I was surprised at how many of the great ones were actually pretty great.
At the top of everyone’s list, of course, is Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He’s perfect in the book, then Gregory Peck came along in the movie and made him perfect-er. I was fortunate enough to hit the Dad Lottery when I was born and I have a really awesome dad, but almost everyone I’ve ever talked to, whether they were raised by a wise, kind father or the other kind, felt some sort of longing for Atticus Finch.
How about Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables?” He rescues Colette, adopts her, protects her, and even sacrifices himself to spare her finding out he has been a criminal. That’s the sort of character who’s usually a mom.
The character of Papa in Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” appealed to my own sense of being a father, the fierce need to shelter your child from as much of the cruel world as possible. He never gets a name, but this father is so strong and resolute, against such odds, that I get choked up thinking about him.
A little less noble than those three is Shakespeare’s King Lear. A flawed father. But aren’t we all?
Finally, there’s Bull Meecham, the brutal bully of Pat Conroy’s “The Great Santini.” Actually, Conroy’s real father appears in various guises throughout many of his novels; “Santini” was just the purest distillation of this character. I know, he has his strengths. But the cruelty is just too pervasive.
Those are five of the most interesting fathers I came up with. Who am I missing? What literary dad has stuck with you?
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By Maria
June 13, 2008 9:50 AM | Link to this
Elrond in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkein set up the Elves as pretty much better than everyone else, and Elrond is written as very wise and powerful. But he’s also a bit selfish when it comes to his daughter, Arwen, which is a very “human” trait. He won’t let her marry Aragorn until he becomes king and he neglects to tell her of the future child, because he wants to spare her the heartbreak of Aragorn’s mortality.
By Jeff
June 13, 2008 11:18 AM | Link to this
OK, first off: The Road was the single WORST book I’ve read in quite a while. I’ll give that the dad was remarkable in his strength and courage, but the book overall is NOT something I would recommend on ANYONE - not even the Devil himself!
As far as remarkable fathers in fiction:
Nicholas Sparks has a few. Taylor McAden (The Rescue), Miles Ryan (A Bend in the Road), Paul Flanner (Nights in Rodanthe), Jeremy Marsh (True Believer/At First Sight), Wilson Lewis (The Wedding), and the unforgettable Noah Calhoun (The Notebook, and a (relatively) minor appearance in The Wedding).
Dale Brown’s Patrick McLanahan is particularly moving in the few scenes you see him with his son.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and John Clark are two men whose kids you do NOT want to mess with. (Particularly Clark, though I don’t remember his kids ever being threatened in the books. Ryan’s, however, were directly targeted in at least two books, and indirectly in at least one or two others - not counting the new book where Jack Ryan Jr becomes the star.)
I don’t remember the character’s name, but in Matthew Reilly’s The Contest, a man and his daughter get teleported to the New York Public Library, where the dad has to deal with several alien beings in a fight to the death. (And before these beings are introduced, the story takes place in the real world, meaning this guy has NO CLUE what these things are or how to fight him, and he isn’t a soldier or fighter to begin with!)
The homeless man that is at the center of Creston Mapes’ (a local author) Nobody has a son who eventually gets involved in the story, and you find out what a good father this homeless man is.
By erinanne
June 13, 2008 12:27 PM | Link to this
Mine are more from my childhood than what I’ve read recently:
I was five when I was first read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. I understand that she was a wee bit biased, but Pa Ingalls stands out in my childhood for being kind and just. He was a good father and husband, a hard worker, and a provider for his family. I know if you read other accounts of the Ingalls family they had many more hard times than what Ms. Wilder portryed in her fiction, but even in those accounts it seems that Pa put his family above anything else, no matter the cost.
The other ‘father’ from my childhood readings is elderly Matthew Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables. I know Anne never called him ‘dad’, but he was her father. He and his sister set out to take in a child, a boy, to have an extra set of hands on the farm. What they get is Anne- not a boy- and certainly not upon first glance at all suitable. Matthew accepts her without question, funny quirks and all, even though he’s always been just a little bit scared of girls.
By margaret
June 13, 2008 9:58 PM | Link to this
the father in “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak. Liesel wasn’t his child by blood… just a stray that found her way to him in the years leading up to WW2, but as a character, he lit up the entire book.
I loved “The Road.” It was quite the poem.
By BPJ
June 14, 2008 5:08 PM | Link to this
One I liked (though he had his flaws) was Jack Burden’s father in All the King’s Men. If you’ve read the book, please don’t reveal the surprise regarding that character, for the sake of those who haven’t read it yet!
One of the better fathers in recent novels is in Ferrol Sams’s Run With the Horsemen.
John Updike’s multi-generational novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies, has several father figures, all flawed in interesting ways. And Updike treated a father-son relationship (apparently based in part on his own) in The Centaur, a favorite of mine.
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