What Happens At The End Of 'In My Father'S Shadow'?

Question

Dreading a sad finale, but I want emotional closure after reading this heavy family drama web novel. Anyone else conflicted about finishing it?

Mercedes Alvarado · Answer

This in-depth family drama ends somewhat ambiously for its protagonist as she finally uncovers all of the family secrets that defined her life. I just finished reading a different, somewhat comparable take on family, legacy, and hidden truth: What Daddy Left Behind. This small but effective mystery centers around more than just a parent’s strange bequeathing of his estate to his children. Instead, one by one, he left behind a variety of odd, nearly bizarre, and even at times sentient items, forcing each of the offspring to examine their entire, somewhat surreal childhood.

Zion · Answer

What I LOVED about “In My Father’s Shadow” was the bittersweet ending of this book. The main character spent the ENTIRE novel trying to get away from his father’s shadow and establish his own identity. And in the end, he realized that the shadow he was running from was HIM. In a final and emotional scene the main character goes to his father’s childhood home. In one of the final scenes of the book the main character finds his father’s old journals and realizes that his father was just as lost and struggling as he was. It was a beautifully quiet moment of understanding between father and son and really hit home for me.

It's a great ending to a great book because it's not about the winner or the loser. It's about how the main character accepted parts of his father in order to start writing his own story. Literally and figuratively. It's a really poignant ending without being mawkish or sappy. The last line of the book is, “I walked away, but I took him with me.” Oh, my heart. This book was one of those rare reads for me. It’s a book about growth and about love of family. I even called my dad the next day just to chat about nothing in particular.

Isla · Answer

'In My Father’s Shadow' is a beautifully understated novel. After so much tension between the author and his father in this novel, it is wonderful to read that the two of them share one ordinary meal together. Most of the conversation is awkward and stilted but slowly gets better. The best part of the novel is the father hesitating to pass the salt and the author noticing and letting it be enough for the first time. The rest of the novel is the author and his father washing up the dishes side by side and the water rinsing away all the resentment of the years. It’s a beautiful and quiet triumph that actually made me feel something for the better.

Xavier · Answer

What an emotional read “In My Father’s Shadow” was. After reading chapter after chapter of the author trying to live up to his father’s huge legacy, it was great to read the final confrontation between father and son. Not an angry one, but rather a honest one. The father, who had always been somewhat of a mysterious character to the author, finally breaks down. It was not a neat and tidy ending to the author’s journey, but rather a real and honest one. The two of them finally acknowledge the weight of the other’s expectations, and the love they both have for each other. The final scene is of the two of them sitting in silence together watching the sunset. Nothing is resolved, but perhaps things will be better from here on in. The book has been recommended to friends of mine who have complicated relationships with their parents. Their reaction has been one of exhausted catharsis.

For me the most impressive thing about the book is how it avoids the obvious way to tell this kind of story – the way to tell it with a neat bow at the end. The protagonist does not become his father’s son in order to find himself. The story does not end with the protagonist and his father having made amends in some profound way. Rather, it ends as it has continued – in a messy, realistic way. As the shadow of his father fades with the setting sun, the protagonist is left to continue his life as he was before. It’s a very satisfying end to a very satisfying story – a story that I have already recommended to a number of my friends with complicated parental relationships. Every one of them has come back to me with a tired but happy sigh.

Dan Mcmanasa · Answer

(Note: I’m very careful not to give too much away, but suffice it to say that this is a beautifully emotional conclusion to a complex, real and satisfying story – and it’s not exactly a happy ending for the hero, but it’s somehow very peaceful. The final scenes with the father are told in reverse, i.e. as a flashback to near the beginning of the book – and it’s a stunning ending, particularly a scene at the father’s funeral where Jamie is asked to say a few words to the throng of mourners who only knew him as the famous public figure. Jamie stands up and says: ‘He was my dad.’)

That’s all. The complexity of all the feelings, love and admiration and anger and distance are all contained in that one simple possessive word. And in that moment the monument crumbles to a person and I am left sitting quietly for a long time after. That’s a very powerful ending.

Sungchanyah · Answer

This is funny. My dad's name is Jamie. I wasn't expecting this to be personal.

Selva Vargas · Answer

The novel ends with the father’s watch. It had been broken the whole time and was stuck at 4:15. Throughout the novel Jamie wonders what that time and watch could mean: was it a lost love, a failure at something? In the end they get it fixed for the father’s birthday and it starts ticking again. The father is taken aback by the watch and then he starts to cry and says “That’s when you were born”.

The enormous shadow that has been following Jamie all these years shrinks down to that one moment of great love that he never knew existed. The watch wasn’t a symbol of a moment of trauma that was frozen in time. Instead it was a symbol of great joy that the father was unable to move past. And what he was unable to move past was the fear that he would fail as a parent at the moment of his son’s birth. Devastating.

Azdy Khaldun · Answer

This ending refames the title. ‘In My Father’s Shadow’ initially reads in a rather negative light – the offspring is obscured by, dominated by the parent. But in the final chapter it is revealed that it is light which creates shadows, and they can provide the coolest of comforts and the best of protection from the sun’s burning rays. The qualities that the offspring had abhorred in their father – caution, diligence, ‘hardness’ – had been developed by him as protective armor, though far from perfect.

Rather, Jamie comes to understand the purpose of the shadow cast by his father and finds a way to duplicate it in order to find rest in its coolness and to establish his own distinct form within it. The final paragraph plays back and forth between the two possible meanings of the title and they are beautiful. Jamie has gone from being the victim of his father’s behavior to being in control of the same inherited traits.

Monica Sofia Perez Bravo · Answer

It ends with a family dinner. Yes, that is the most normal thing of all, after 300 pages of tense and silent meals. The father tries to tell a joke but fails with the punchline. For the first time Jamie laughs – not about the joke, but about the attempt of his father to be funny. The father looks surprised and then smiles.

No resolution of the old problems occurs in this quiet scene of a family sharing a dinner. Yet, in spite of all the old, unresolved problems that exist in this family, the pattern of connection they develop in this moment is new. They manage to connect over their shared sense of awkwardness rather than battling over their shared problems. The shadow cast by the overhead light still exists, but for this moment, they are sitting together in it, and it is okay. This is masterful writing that shows a seismic shift in mundane life.

Alexa Reyes · Answer

I’ve never read that, but it sounds like a really serious family-based novel or something that eventually leads to a protagonist who finally leaves behind their dad’s legacy or comes to terms with him. Possibly even forgives him, but that’s the sort of novel where people come to terms with themselves too. I’d be interested if the shadow ended up being a protective entity of some sort, but I suspect that’d be too genre for the sort of serious novel that is.

Thanks for the read. Does anyone know if the father is actually a hero in the book or just another flawed human being? I understand the metaphor of “The Shadow of the Father” and feel that the author would have to live up to the title.

Gail Crosby · Answer

I find the ending to be a very quiet and introspective place. Rather than end on a high note or be a sad book, the last few pages are reminiscent of a calm day after a big storm. Instead of getting into a lot of plot or description, the prose simplifies to allow for good observations of the characters.

You feel the character’s exhaustion. But you also sense a fragile new clarity. The noisy story of the middle chapters has come to an end. Jamie and his father are sitting in the same room again without the frantic mental commentary that previously filled their heads. That silence is the real victory. It is the end of a long war that has been raging inside of Jamie’s head for decades. And a peace treaty is merely silence. Silence is far more powerful than any word of apology.

S0lvingMysTeriEs · Answer

The Wikipedia summary of the ending is terrible and so reduces it down to ‘Jamie reconciles with his father’. Which is a really reductive summary because reconciliation implies a return to some previous good state and Jamie and his father had never had that. What actually occurs is the introduction of two complex adults. For the first time. With no guarantee that anything will come of it.

No, they are establishing acquaintance, fragile as that is. And that is the whole point of the novel: building something from scratch in the face of crushing parents and a dynamic that has been in place for so long. To call it “reconciliation” is to do a disservice to the painful, beautiful work of building something new out of the wreckage of their past. And Wikipedia is simply not up to the task of capturing the nuances of this complex novel.

What Happens At The End Of 'In My Father'S Shadow'?

12 Answers

Related Books

Buried in His Shadow

The Father I Chose

Beneath His Empire ( In Bed With My Father's Killer)

My Father, the Bloodthirsty Devil

Farewell, Dad

A Father Claimed

Topic

Related Questions

What happens at the ending of The Dead Fathers Club?

What happens at the ending of Father Does Know Best?

How does 'My Brother's Keeper' end?

What happens at the end of Kingdom of Spirit and Shadow?

What happens in the ending of 'In the Shadow of a Song: The Story of the Parton Family'?

How does Like Mother, Like Daughter end?

What happens at the end of Daemons of the Shadow Realm, Vol. 1?

How does The First Time I Saw Him end and what happens?

How does 'Shadow Slave: The Ascension' end?

How I Met Your Father ending explained?