This is a play about the haunting guilt caused by a father's suicide, and the son's attempt to pay tribute to his father's noble sacrifice through his writing of poetry, which some say, like his acerbic wife, is pedestrian and derivative. he believes he can redeem his father's death through his verse. Mugsy, his dog, is the only one who doesn't criticize his poetry when he reads it aloud to him ( which he does often in the play).