Dead Father's Club Themes

Like Hamlet before it, The Dead Father’s Club is centered around the lack of certainty. While it is a book revolving around the idea of getting revenge, it’s theme is more along the lines of indecisiveness. Philip has countless opportunities to avenge his father’s death, but time and time again he fails to act. Philip poured ethanol into Uncle Alan’s glass of whisky, but chickened out last minute. “I unscrewed the bottle and I waited until all the heads went down… I poured the poison into the glass… He switched the microphone off and put it back on the stand and he lifted his eyebrows up and smiled at Mum. Then he looked at the whisky and I looked at him and I looked at the whisky and I looked at Mum and he was getting closer and closer to the whiskey and I went under the table and pretended to do my laces and I lifted my head and my back with all my strength like Atlas who carried the world on his back and I lifted up the table …show more content…
“... I looked in Leah’s eyes… I kept trying to speak… I sighed and this made her frown… I hit the gate so it opened and ran off and left Leah just standing there…” (Haig 151-152). Philips’ behavior isn’t what one would expect in a book based around revenge. He keeps failing to act, not giving the audience the action they assume will take place to avenge the murder. He has his doubts about what he’s doing, as shown by the numerous occassions that he didn’t pull through. He can’t bring himself to just blindly trust in his father’s ghost, not knowing if his dad is reliable; especially after the minibus incident when he told him the wrong night the pub would get broken into. Is his father’s ghost actually trustworthy? Or is he just misleading Philip? How can Philip know for sure? The Dead Father’s Club shows that life is built around uncertainties, thus why Philip cannot act appropriately in the situation he is