The Boat by Alistair Macleod

Happiness is obviously what everyone wants but to a good father nothing thumps the further of his children; the father in Alistair Macleod’s short story “the boat” is such a father. He puts the happiness of his children over his owe marriage, ignoring the selfish expectations of the mother he teaches his kid to follow their dreams.

Sacrificing unrealized aspirations and true personal happiness to fulfil his responsibility has a father and husband. He even makes the ultimate sacrifice in order for his son to follow his dream.

Throughout the story the mother and the father are in conflict, even opposes, the most significant is the way they raises there kids. The mother believe her children her should be brought up the same way she was, following the same tradition he had, living a similar life she did and would not be satisfied otherwise. She sees the fathers love for literature has a huge waste of time and becomes extremely angry at her children for following in their fathers foot stapes.

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“Take your nose out of that trash and come do your work,” she would say, and once I saw her slap my youngest sister so hard that the print of her hand was scarletly emblazoned upon her daughter’s cheek while the broken-spined paperback fluttered uselessly to the floor. ” (403) this shows just how furious she would get.

The father however does not went the traditions the mother believes for their children, inside he believes in their potential and encourages them to go out to the world and follow their dreams. All of them liked my father very much and, after he’d brought them back from their circles in the harbour, they invited him to their rented cabins which were located high on a hill overlooking the village to which they were so alien. ”() Here he shows the kids though his actions that the out siders are not to be feared. The father could just let his wife have it her way and not speak out, making it much easier on himself. But he care so much for them as to give up his owe marriage. His marriage is not the only thing he sacrifices. When he came home he threw the money he had earned on the kitchen table as he did with all his earnings” (). All day every day he has devoted himself to the job he never wanted; in order to provide a living for his family he gives up his owe happiness. Even though he had so much potential in him he still remains responsible to his family. Taking the burdens and responsibility he could just as easily have dropped.

It seems he has sacrificed so much that the only thing he has to look forward to is the idea of escaping to his room. Whenever he was not in the boat, my father spent most of his time lying on the bed”. With the war raging outside his room becomes the only place of peace, the books his only joy. As he read though the room full of books, taking in all that knowledge and information he learned so much that he could have accomplish anything, But he remains loyal to his family to the end. The choices and sacrifices the father made has made him Shaffer throughout the entire story, in a finally act of affection and sacrifice for his son he commits suicide. I hope you will remember what you’ve said. ”(409) the narrator sees the sacrifices his father as made and wishes to lighten his burdens but of course the father does not went his son to follow his foot stapes; so in a finally attempt to give his son what he never had, a chance to follow his dreams, he makes the ultimate sacrifice. In a way the father has freed himself, choosing the last day of the fishing season and making it look like an accident, he has planned the suicide well.

He dead knowing that the sacrifices he made give his children the further he has envisioned for them. The father sacrificed so much for the sake of his children, his dreams, his marriage, and even his life. “It was very much braver to spend a life doing what you really do not want rather than selfishly following forever your own dreams and inclinations. ” (409). Perhaps now he well finally and truly has some peace and quiet with his books in that ever-ready chair of his.