story, for example, the father takes an opportunity to deride the son's relationship with the uncle, and the son, in return, takes the opportunity to deride the father's habit of poring over the obituaries and the advertisements for teachers in the newspaper. This retort from the son is described as a "counter thrust," implying that the father and son's conversations are like a fencing match, with each trying to score points against the other.

However, there are also within the story sections of dialogue which suggest a more tender, affectionate side to the relationship between the father and the son. When, for example, the son offers to make coffee and sandwiches for the father, the father replies, "Good man," and offers to "give [the son] a hand."

If you read through the story again, you will be able to find plenty of other examples of dialogue, some of which imply that the relationship between the father and the son is fraught and some of which imply that there is, nonetheless, some affection still remaining between the two.

The Embedded Narrative

The story begins with what is called a frame narrative before going back in time into what is called an embedded narrative, or, more commonly, a flashback. Within this embedded narrative we learn that, one year previous, the father asked the son's permission to marry again. The father seems hurt when the son has no objections. He seems hurt because the son seems indifferent to the memory of his mother and because the son's indifference makes the father feel "as if his life [has] been brutally severed from the other life" he had with the son's mother.

This flashback helps us to understand why the relationship between the father and the son seems so fraught in the frame narrative. The moment when the father asked the son for his permission to remarry was perhaps the moment when their relationship started to become as fraught as it seems in the frame narrative. This perhaps helps to make the relationship so memorable because it is a situation which so many readers will be personally familiar with and will, therefore, be able to empathize with.

The Uncle

Through his conversations with his uncle, the son reveals the extent of his feelings toward his father. The son tells his uncle that his father "bores him" and that he would like to live with the uncle rather than the father. "With his uncle," he says, "everything seem[s] open." The implication here is that he feels that, with his father, everything is "closed," or repressed, and this seems to ring true when we remember the aforementioned fencing analogy used to describe the conversations between the father and the son.

When discussing with his uncle his father's intention to remarry, the uncle says to the son:

any pair of imbeciles of age can go and take a marriage license out and set about bringing up a child in the world, which is a much more complicated activity than driving an old car around!

The implication here is that the uncle is criticizing the way his nephew has been brought up. In this analogy, the father is likely one of the "imbeciles," and thus the inference is that the uncle does not approve of the way that his nephew has been brought up, possibly because of the closed, repressed nature of the relationship alluded to above.

The relationship between the father and the son is memorable in part because of what is not said between them, and it is mostly through the son's conversations with the uncle that we learn the extent of what is unsaid. For your essay, you might like to look at what is revealed through these conversations about the son's real feelings toward the father.

Death

There is throughout the story a recurring motif of death. Indeed, the story begins and ends with the description of the dead rabbit that the son discovers on the golf course. When the son sees his father with his prospective new wife, Miss McCabe, he remarks that the sight "disturbed him." He is disturbed because he interprets his father's relationship with this woman as a "defense...too brittle against the only end of life." In other words, the father, from the son's perspective, is trying to guard himself against the loneliness of old age and impending death.

Toward the end of the story, the father visits Miss McCabe in her hotel room where she is recovering from a heart attack. He quickly decides to abandon her, explaining to the son that he doesn't want to be in a relationship with a woman who might die at any moment. The son understands that "it was the stoat the father had glimpsed in Miss McCabe’s hotel room, and [that] he was running." This metaphor is interesting because it suggests that the father is running from death. In the metaphor, the father is the rabbit. He is relentlessly pursued by death in the same way as the rabbit was relentlessly pursued by the stoat.

This revelation, that the father is fleeing from death, arguably makes the relationship between the father and son more memorable because the son's hostility toward the father becomes more questionable. We might think that the son should be more sympathetic toward his father than he is, and we might question why he is not.

Let's take a look at the relationship between the father and the son in John McGahern's short story “The Stoat.”

We'll begin with the son's attitude toward his father. The son is civil and polite, but he is also rather distant and apathetic. He carries on a decent conversation with his father. He seems attentive to his father's needs, bringing him lunch and generously offering to cook supper for his father and his father's girlfriend. He goes along with all of his father's ideas about remarrying, assuring his father at all times that he thinks his father is doing the right thing and that he has no objections. Yet we get a feeling that the son is merely going along because it is easier to do so. Notice one of his comments. When his father remarks that he worries his son will be offended by his possible remarriage, the young man replies,

That's ridiculous. I think you should do exactly what you want to do. It's your life.

The father is hurt by these words or, perhaps, more by the tone in which they are said. Does his son sound more apathetic than encouraging? The son expresses no detailed opinions, offers no discussion, asks no questions, carries on no real conversation. Does he really care at all for his father and his father's interests?

We begin to wonder when we hear the son's discussion with his uncle about his father's marriage-seeking. The uncle notes, “At least, if he does get married, it'll get him off your back.” The uncle finds the young man's father “dull,” and the young man looks up to his uncle, who has served as his mentor in his medical studies, so perhaps the son also finds his father dull, uninteresting, and not worthy of much response.

In fact, the pattern continues when the son meets Miss McCabe. He merely responds to his father's questioning with the comment that he thinks she is “a fine person” and that he has no objections. Again, he offers no further details or discussion. We get a better idea of what the son truly thinks of Miss McCabe when she offers him money for his schooling after the three share a meal. “That won't be necessary,” the son responds “cuttingly,” annoyed by the offer and feeling “soiled” by the whole encounter, as if it were all “buffoonery” and “against any sense of dignity.” Indeed, the son is quite disgusted by his father and Miss McCabe.

The son returns to his apathy when his father decides to walk out of his relationship with Miss McCabe, heading for home instead of remaining at the vacation cottage. This time, the son does offer a shocked, “You can't do that” but then quickly accepts the situation and moves on with his life. The son will not join his father but will go to enjoy his uncle's home and conversation instead.

Now let's turn to the father. Although we do not hear his inner thoughts, we can see him trying to reach out to his son, to include him in his life and in his decisions, only to be pushed away or brushed aside again and again. He seems to want his son's true opinions, and he keeps trying to encourage him to become more involved. There is a sense of wistfulness in the father, too. “Soon you'll be a fully qualified doctor,” he tells his son, “while I'll have to eke out my days between this empty house and the school.”

This relationship seems to be a classic case of a father and a son who do not really understand each other. The son remains apathetic for the most part, telling his father what he thinks his father wants to hear and then going on about his own life. The father wants to reach out to the son and does try, but he cannot connect with him. The whole situation is really quite sad, and at the end of the story, the father and son once again go their separate ways.

In John McGahern’s story, one interesting feature about the son’s relationship with his father is that he is actually closer to his father’s brother. The young man, who is the story’s narrator, has decided to study medicine because his uncle promoted this career; his father, who is a teacher, had wanted him to become a banker. The gaps in understanding between father and son, which were clearly present before the story’s action begins, grow deeper as the father decides to remarry.

As his father’s plans progress, a woman called Miss McCabe is identified as a potential match; she is also a teacher. She comes to visit the Irish village where they are staying, and moves into the cottage where the son formerly stayed with his father, so he must now live in a hotel. The link between this physical distance and the emotional distance is shown by the son’s reaction to see his father with his new girlfriend on his arm. This closeness makes him realize that Miss McCabe is a person, not an abstraction, and from now on will be part of his father’s life.

When she shows generosity toward the son, in the form of potentially supporting his future studies, rather than gratitude he expresses his loyalty to his uncle. Ironically, the aspiring physician cannot help the ailing woman, who has a heart condition and suffers a serious heart attack. This incident causes the father to abandon her, showing that the son had overreacted and his father was not as emotionally committed as he had believed. Perhaps father and son are actually alike, sharing a lack of sentimentality.

The relationship between father and son in "The Stoat" is memorable because McGahern depicts them behaving as friends and equals, building an apparently close relationship in the absence of the wife and mother who once completed the family. Much of "The Stoat" consists of dialogue between father and son. The father is in his late fifties and the son is presumably in his twenties (he is a medical student, soon to qualify as a doctor), and they address each other more like brothers or close friends than members of different generations, casually yet thoughtfully looking after each other's needs:

"I’d feel like a pint if I went down. If you take a drink too early in this weather it makes the day very cumbersome to get through."
"There’s cheese and bread and a bit of salad. I could make up sandwiches and have coffee."
"That’d be far better. Good man. Can I give you a hand?"
"No. Stay where you are. I’ll bring them out."

When the father considers remarriage, he asks the son's blessing, enquiring if he would "take it very much to heart" if he were to marry again. The son's reply that he should do as he likes with his life seems to wound his father, as though this comment is a disavowal of their closeness. These instances suggest that the father and son depend on one another a great deal and have grown particularly close because for some time the family has consisted only of the two of them. They seem so close that even the statement that the father is free to do as he likes is a jarring note in the otherwise smooth flow of their companionable conversation. The establishment of the relationship in these terms increases the reader's surprise when it turns out that selfishness and the division between person and person are major themes of the story and that none of the relationships between son, father, and Miss McCabe, whom the father initially intends to marry, are as close as they first appear.