Familial Influence Theme Analysis

At the heart of “The Drunkard” is the relationship between Larry and his hard-drinking father, Mick. When their neighbor dies, Larry’s mother knows that Mick is likely to use the funeral as an excuse to drink, so she sends young Larry with his father, hoping his presence will deter Mick from drinking. Afterwards, though, Mick simply brings Larry to the bar, where Larry winds up drinking his father’s pint before Mick can have a drop. In this way, Larry does keep Mick sober (though not how his mother expected); Mick, after all, is too busy taking care of his drunk child to do any drinking himself. Despite Larry’s success in keeping Mick sober, the spectre of Mick’s influence on Larry looms over the story’s somewhat happy ending. Even though Mick’s sobriety is intact, Larry has been introduced to drinking at a shockingly young age, and it’s clear that his father’s influence might be leading him down a disastrous path.

One of Mick’s central character traits is his lackluster parenting. On the day of the funeral, he bribes Larry with lemonade so he can go to the bar and drink, tries to get Larry to play out in the road unsupervised, and, when this attempt to ditch Larry fails, Mick ignores Larry in order to talk to his friends, which pushes Larry to drink. There’s also evidence that this kind of behavior (and worse) is normal for Mick. Larry shows himself to be wary of his father’s conduct: he knows the lemonade is a bribe, presumably because he’s been bribed in similar fashion before. More significantly, he also knows he “might have to bring [Mick] home, blind drunk, down Blarney Lane.” Once again, readers must presume that Larry knows this because something similar has happened before. Given Larry’s young age, the fact that Mick puts Larry in the position of having to take care of him when he’s drunk demonstrates how inept and reckless he is when it comes to parenting. It’s no wonder, then, that Larry instinctively distrusts Mick’s motives.

While Mick sets bad examples for Larry, Larry’s drunkenness might be an opportunity for Mick to change. After all, by embarrassing Mick and behaving badly, Larry is inadvertently holding up a mirror to Mick’s own behavior, which might allow Mick to see himself for who he is. Once drunk, Larry becomes the unmanageable embarrassment his father has always been, and he seems to experience the entire spectrum of possible drunken states, from self-pity to animosity and everything in between. Mick, sober for once, struggles to maintain control over the situation—a taste of his own medicine that might make him reflect on his past behaviour. However, Mick seems to squander this moment, since he’s too caught up in self-pity and vanity to change his ways. When he realizes that Larry is drunk, he continues to behave poorly, refusing to help Larry when he’s vomiting because it might spoil his suit, and scolding Larry for being drunk, even thought it was Mick’s neglect that allowed Larry to drink in the first place. In addition to blaming Larry for Mick’s own irresponsibility, Mick blames his wife, snarling that women should be at home to “look after their children themselves”—implying that it’s his wife’s responsibility to watch Larry, even though he was explicitly in charge. Mick’s refusal to take responsibility for his own negligence becomes absurd as he repeatedly bemoans the “misfortune” of his child has ruining his opportunity to have fun. It seems that, instead of feeling ashamed of his own negligent parenting, he feels entitled to the pity of others. This attitude lasts through the end of the story, when he tells Mrs. Delaney not to be mad at him for getting Larry drunk, since he deserves her pity for having his day ruined. It seems he has learned nothing from this episode. Even though his sobriety is intact and he’s able to go to work as normal (a boon to his family), his inability to acknowledge his bad behavior is not promising for the future.

O’Connor uses the story to make a serious (if largely implicit) point about the way alcohol abuse tends to run in families, and, more generally, about how fathers can condition their sons to adopt harmful habits. Mick may be the “drunkard” of the story’s title, but the suggestion is that Larry—a natural mimic of his father’s behaviors—could go on to become an alcoholic himself. O’Connor subtly drives home the idea of destructive mimicry by having the drunken Larry belt out “The Boys of Wexford,” an Irish ballad with the lyric “’Twas the drink that brought us down.” Should this reference be lost on the reader, Mrs. Delaney subsequently makes the same point in much more explicit fashion: “God forgive you, wasting our hard-earned few ha’pence on drink, and bringing up your child to be a drunken corner-boy like yourself.” So, while this story’s ending is somewhat happy—Mick stays sober and takes care of Larry—its undertone is unmistakably bleak. Mick’s influence on Larry has already led Larry to dangerous behavior, and nobody is confident that he has changed.