“A son’s responsibility isn’t to be like his father, but to be better than him”

The statement that a son’s responsibility is to be better than his father becomes the moral hinge between Simon Kefas and Sonny Lofthus. Simon offers it as an alternative to inherited shame: a father’s failure need not determine what his son becomes. Sonny later remembers the maxim when he changes his mind, making the idea not merely advice but a reason to choose differently.

A Challenge to Inherited Guilt

Simon’s appeal begins with the possibility of choice. He wonders whether the past had to unfold as it did, whether he, Ab, and Sonny could have chosen differently, and whether something might help them choose differently next time. When Sonny observes that Simon sounds like a believer, Simon does not claim certainty; he turns instead to what he believes about Ab’s intentions. Ab wanted a better life for himself and his family, Simon says, and love was his downfall. His moral failure, however, does not make Sonny a copy of him.

The maxim reframes responsibility as a demand for ethical difference rather than resemblance. Sonny may judge himself harshly because he thinks he has inherited his father’s character, but Simon insists that a son’s task is not to repeat his father’s life. The distinction preserves the reality of Ab’s failure while refusing to treat it as Sonny’s destiny.

Choice at the Needle

Simon makes the idea immediate and practical by speaking while Sonny prepares to inject heroin. Sonny has tied a rubber tube around his upper arm, bitten the end of it, and holds the syringe poised against his finger. Simon presents a direct alternative: Sonny can insert the needle, or help him get the Twin and uncover the real mole. The maxim thus joins personal change to a concrete choice with consequences beyond Sonny himself.

The scene sets repetition against possibility. Sonny’s prepared injection embodies a familiar course; Simon’s appeal asks whether he can interrupt it. Rather than promise that change will erase the past, Simon argues that Sonny remains responsible for what he does next. The father-son comparison becomes a way to make that responsibility bearable: Sonny need not deny Ab’s intentions or condemn himself as Ab’s inevitable successor in order to choose another action.

Recalled and Put into Action

Later, when Simon asks what changed Sonny’s mind, Sonny answers that it was something Simon had said. He begins recalling the thought—that a son’s responsibility is not to be like his father—and Simon completes it: to be better than him. The exchange confirms that Sonny has carried the words from the earlier confrontation into his decision.

The maxim’s force lies in this return. First spoken as Simon’s argument against fatalism, it comes back in Sonny’s own explanation of why he changed course. Simon then repeats the imperative directly, urging Sonny to be better than his father as police sirens sound in the distance. The phrase does not undo Ab’s past or promise an easy redemption; it marks a decision made in the present, when Sonny can still choose what to do.