Robert Anderson’s play I Never Sang for My Father is an emotional story about Gene Garrison and his father, Tom Garrison, attempting to love one another. His father’s abandonment and his mother’s early death traumatized Tom Garrison as a child. Forced to take care of himself and his siblings, he grew up fast, cold and emotionally detached. As an adult, Tom Garrison is controlling, self-centered and materialistic. His demanding methods and distant …showed first 75 words of 543 total…

…showed last 75 words of 543 total…for his family, Tom is unable to weaken. He’s spent so many years proving to himself and the world that he is worthy, that he just can’t succumb to tenderness. In the end, Tom is a lonely and abandoned man. The very things that he fought with his “iron will” to overcome, are lost. He desperately fought to overcome the loss of his parent’s love and ultimately sacrificed his children’s love.