The father and son relationships as described in the book.

The father and son relationships as described in the book.

Usually, having heard “the father and son relationships”, we imagine an idyllic picture of a man who teaches his son to drive a car, to build or repair something, two men who live in a harmony, understanding each other and capable of share their secrets and thoughts. But in this book Iris Murdoch has shown the different ones relationships between those who are believed to be hail-fellow, but in fact, who are not.

William Mor is completely estranged from his children, who are splendid individualists. He doesn’t understand them, and they are way ahead of him while he is at a standstill everywhere: in his work, in his submission to Nan, in relations with the colleagues. I would call Bill and Don’s relationships a silent rebellion, as they are distant, staying in mute confronting and misunderstanding. It’s seen from the first scene of Donald’s mention. Nan says that Bill “always pretends people don’t know what they want when they don’t want what he wants”. Really, Bill bullied Don into taking the college exam, and Don was in rebellion against such a career imagined to satisfy his father.  Mor is a man who cannot take decisions concerning his own life, but he has already decided everything for his son, and that’s way he has lost the affection of him.

In fact, Donald is closer to Tim Burke than to his father. And that irritates Mor, when he realizes that Donald attends the WEA classes for the sake of Tim. Mor couldn’t stand such injustice and his son looked to him extremely young, touching, and alien. When Don comes back home, he doesn’t talk to his father, who embraces him, he just looks at him, raising his eyebrows in a half humorous half desperate appeal. But later Don pronounces Tim’s name : 'I'm afraid I gave Tim an awful night too. We've hardly slept.' That says about his care of Tim, and carelessness of the parents.

We know that Mor hates Jimmie Carde and while he is a friend of Donald, maybe Bill envies him and wants to be at the place of Carde. When they meet at the playground, both feel clumsy and don’t know what to say, so they pronounce a few insignificant words. At that time Mor feels a deep sadness that he’s not able to express his love for his son, and that it could even be that Donald did not know at all that it existed.

In my opinion, the only time when Mor expressed his love and real worries of Donald was in the day of his failure climbing on the tower. Bill recognized that he really loved the boy only in the case of deadly danger. At that moment he was carefully choosing his words and he was all in to save Don. But, to the other hand, after the Don’s escape Bill was irritated by the fact that he wouldn’t come to the exam, and even if his anxiety about Donald was intense, he confessed to himself that his anxiety about Rain was equally intense. But in my opinion, he worried about his relations with Nan more than about problems with Donald.  It is proved by the fact that when Felicity came up to Bill and called out something, at first Mor understood it as 'Rain's come back!' And that can’t characterize him as a real father.

And finally, I think that there is no relationships between Mor and Don, they look rather like neighbors or distant relatives, not father and son.

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