A Son: Your Own Personal AA Meeting

Note: I suggest listening to "I Saw Three Ships" (15 on the player) while reading this post.  Makes it all so much more relevant.

Another good story this week.  I liked The Drunkard because the author (as well as the story's setting) is Irish and, well, I'm Irish and when you're Irish you love everything Irish (Go Irish!).  And it was funny; that's always a plus.

#4. Is the title seriously meant? To whom does it refer?

The title is seriously meant.  It refers to both the father and the son.  The son is indeed a drunkard in the sense that he drank his father's whole pint and spends the rest of the story completely smashed.  Through the use of this humor, the greater significance (the more serious significance, as it were) is highlighted when the reader realizes that the title simultaneously refers to the true drunkard of the story, the father.  We see a glimpse in the final paragraphs of the story of the remediation of his alcoholic ways, though, at the hands of his (ironically) drunkard son.