The Old Man sees his family's house as not simply a house but as a kind of living thing. He says that, when his father set fire to the house while drunk, his father killed the house—as if it were a person. The house contains the dreams and ghosts of the Old Man's family, and the Old Man sees his mother's ghost at the window, watching for her husband to return home.

The family's drama continues in the house forever. The Old Man is a pedlar, a person who is an itinerant salesman. He travels from place to place, and he says that his son was conceived in a ditch. After his house was destroyed, he has no home and was rootless. He returns home in an effort to free his mother's ghost from the house, but he cannot do so. His family's history is forever intertwined with the house. He himself cannot separate from his family, their home, or the cruelty and pain that is so tightly entwined in all of these things. The house, too, harbors ghosts and apparitions like memories. It is a physical manifestation of the past. There is a legacy there just like the kind developed by humans. The house lives and breathes and remembers—so, too, does a family.

The Old Man and his son are affected by acts that occurred years before. They cannot escape the effects of the actions of the Old Man's parents. In fact, the Old Man continually watches the ghost of his mother relive her husband's drunken return home and her impregnation, an act that caused her death in childbirth. The Old Man kills his sixteen-year-old son in an attempt to release his mother's soul from purgatory, but this does not work. Instead, he is forever trapped by the past and unable to free himself from it. There is, too, the concept of living up to expectations and leaving a legacy. While the house at one point was home to the Old Man’s mother and her wealth, his father ruined this with an act of debauchery. Now, the Old Man has been made partially responsible for such turmoil, especially since his mother died bringing him into the world. The Old Man relives his own actions, and follows in the footsteps of his father. While his father ruined the house, the Old Man has ruined his chances at happiness by killing both his father and son.

Father figures in Yeats's play are problematic. The Old Man thinks his mother should never have married his father, whom he describes as a drunken lout. His father did not educate him and set fire to the family's house in an act of debauchery. The Old Man killed his father but is not remorseful about it and, in fact, feels as though it was justified. The Old Man is not a good father himself. He and his son have a strained relationship, evidenced by the Boy attempting to steal from him and receive his “fair share.” He winds up killing his son, and the cycle of problematic fathers is perpetuated.