Please help. Please try to react on this?

Question

Please help. Please try to react on this and give your understanding at the story "The Father".
http://books.jibble.org/etext04/strsb10/StoriesbyForeignAuthorsScandin-1.html
Please, no senseless answers.

Thank you!
^_^

Answer 1

This is all I could find.

THE FATHER” BY BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON
Plot Summary: “The Father” has the plot of a fable. A peasant, Thord Overaas, visits his priest four times during the course of twenty-one years. The first time he asks that his son, Finn, be baptized by himself. Sixteen years later Thord pays the priest ten dollars, for Finn is to stand first (among his peers) for confirmation/ communion. Next, when the bans of the son’s impending marriage are to be published, Thord pays the priest three dollars; this is an excessive amount, but Finn is to marry the richest girl in the parish, and Thord “wants to do it handsomely”. Soon after this, father and son are involved in a boating accident, and the son loses his life. A year later, Thord visits the priest for the last time. He (Thord) is so much changed that the priest barely recognizes him. Thord has sold his farm, and presents half of its price to be given to the poor. When asked what he will now do, Thord responds, “something better”. The priest declares that the son has at last “brought a true blessing”.


Criticism: (Key Elements: plot sequence, setting, symbolism, theme.)

“The Father”, a story of pride and a misdirected life, is rich in meaning, for it makes much use of symbolism. Numbers are symbols when we realize that at age twenty-one (or the age when one becomes an adult) the son has died for his father, or become “father to the man”. When thought of as a Christian parable, the number three is important indeed, for the reader recalls the symbolism of the trinity. Certainly the title is ambiguous, for it possesses three possible meanings:Who is “the father”? The priest? Thord? The son?

Answer 2

This appears to be a story of a man with immense pride. All that seems to matter to him is that he has the best of everything in his life. He takes pride in the fact that his son excells also.
The ultimate lesson is that, on losing his son, he gains humility, something he has never had.
(This is very basic, I'm in a hurry, but its something to start with. Good luck!)