holy cow, i don’t even know where to start. just finished SMUOT for english and i’m fully aware the whole point of the story is like the cheating aspect and like how P.S. gets caught and the aftermath of that, but i took more from the relationship between P.S. and his father!!
for those who have no idea what i’m talking about, quick summary:
* PS, main character, is at a well-known prep school in VA that his family has attended for generations
* PS isn’t the greatest student, especially in latin, and he has an upcoming quiz
* PS finds translation of a text he needs during the quiz written on his desk (cheating)
* because he’s scared of failing the quiz/disappointing his father again, he cheats and his “friend” catches him and turns him in
okay, now my thoughts
first of all, the reason he cheated was so heavily rooted in being satisfactory and living up to the reputation his family set (they literally have a building named after his family on campus) which made my heart drop towards the end when we kinda see his dad not even mad when he finds out, just wishing he’d supported his son more through his academic troubles and yet PS is still so scared of making him mad or not living up to expectations. i think a lot of this has to do with how distant they are as a father and son because when you don’t know a lot about a certain person your mind makes assumptions and using the rep his family has at the school (especially his dad, who did well) and how other people probably react to him failing, he has no choice than to assume his dad’s going to be mad bc he doesn’t really have evidence to prove otherwise. this is all to say that the scene where his dad walks in and basically just says “i’m not mad, i’m a little disappointed, i wish we’d worked better together to help you not feel like you have to cheat”
second: the difference in the way they regard each other. almost every time PS ends a sentence where he’s talking to his dad, he says “sir”, and i didn’t notice it much until the line where his dad goes “My own son calls me sir.” tears. sobbing. not even joking or exaggerating a tiny bit, that line broke me. seeing the realization hit his dad that like his son feels like love has been replaced by respect (another line from the story) so heavily that PS can’t call him dad anymore and how sad that makes him just felt like a punch in the gut because i feel bad for everyone here. i feel bad for PS because he’s being expelled and because his relationship with his dad is so distant/he’s being influenced by southern culture or masuline culture (love is an emotion which, according to culture in the south, men aren’t supposed to feel!) that he calls his dad sir, and i feel bad for his dad because he was just clueless until that second about where his relationship with his son had gone.
then, at the end, all of this made the last couple of times he talks to his dad where he calls him “dad” just feel like a weight lifted off the world. i don’t think PS was even supposed to do it consciously, just something clicked in a way during their conversations and you can feel that truly connecting the way they did during those conversations while he was packing, in the headmaster’s office, etc is so rare for them so to see them do it and see it have a positive impact on their relationship was just, wow.
if you read all of that incoherent yapping, thank you for suffering through this with me. i don’t see a ton of conversations about this side of the story specifically online and think this is worth talking about, sooooo 🙂
TL;DR: story with a father/son relationship growing/changing/maybe improving (?) stuns girl-with-daddy-issues
by Acceptable-Loquat374