the worst dads in literature
Last month in honor of Mothers Day we took a look at some of the meanest moms in literature. Now it’s dad’s turn. Among this crop of nasty paternal figures is one extreme example of an overly-involved parent, a father who sells his wife and daughter off to the highest bidder, and, last but certainly not least, there’s the dad who rapes and impregnates his own daughter. Bleak. Check out the full list of evil dads here.
Of course, there are a bunch of dads missing from this list of six. I think vast chunks of works by writers from Charles Dickens to Pat Conroy feature an array of sinister father figures. And then there’s the puritanical title character of Christina Stead’s forgotten 1940s masterpiece, The Man Who Loved Children. And who can forget about Jack Torrance from The Shining? I certainly can’t. I still have nightmares…
If nothing else, a foray into these books will certainly help you appreciate how great your own dad is. Love you, Dad! Happy Fathers Day to all.
Not entirely fictional, but Charles Bukowski’s father was pretty awful, too (see Ham on Rye and various poems).
Brendan –
Good call! I am still somewhat traumatized from reading Ham On Rye in high school. Me=not hardboiled enough.
This
I’ll have to check these out – thanks.
The father in Pan Conroy’s book “The Great Santini” is pretty much a bastard!
Reponse Number 5 is Spam (feel free to delete my post when you delete AndrewJames’)
Emusic’s “dad,” J Danforth Stein, could easily be the world’s worst dad for letting his child, “Emusic,” become so meretricious.
wow. how prescient of you, 17dots.
RIP
classy photo.
Pretty spineless to take the photo down. You either meant it or you didn’t. Lame.
Porieux, I have to completely disagree with you threre (once I remembered what the pic was) it was removed out of respect for the dead, just like the MJ scene in Bruno was removed for the same reason, it’s one thing to have a recent thing that makes fun of a living figure but to have the same “joke” be in the light of their death not as much good.
In the same way that the figures of the Twin towers were earased from spiderman 1 and Zoolander because they came out at the same time as 9/11.
So I think that 17dots did the right thing and it was not spinless at all
Pathetic examples also.