The play is told from the perspective of Alan looking back 12 years after his visit to live with his father and stepmother. Wilson's play takes a sharp look at family life, what it means to become whole through the relationship with your father, and the foster care system. Douglas is a man who does things his way, he regularly cheated on Alan's mom, even being gone while his mother gave birth to she and Douglas' dead daughter. He abandons them with Ronnie, and they move to California to start a new life.
However, Douglas is a man who takes what he wants, believing that there are no boundaries to his actions. This begins on his wedding night, when he first reveals he was married and has a son. This action leads us to seeing him behave in the same way in the present moments in the play. We understand that this man has not grown, but instead has his own morality that he believes everyone else should bend to in order to be more like him. His first action as father to Alan is to get him full-time work because he and Ronnie can't pay his tuition for school.
Alan is given little room to breath and expected to be perfectly in tune with devoting his life to work and school, when in reality he desires his father's love. The hard truth of this father-son relationship is that because Douglas doesn't want to change, he rages against anyone who is against him thus, destroying his relationships, not allowing them to move forward. Because if they did, he would have to reveal the truth: that he is a phony, something that Alan desires never to be.
