“How far away from your father can you run?” As one of the first things said in C.E Morgan’s The Sport of Kings, this line sets the tone for the whole novel. The opening scene portrays a young Henry Forge running from his father, for fear of being punished for a crime he doesn’t believe he's committed (Morgan 3). Henry hates his father, a hypocritical man with a temper and disdain for anything different than himself, and swears he will never be like him. Yes, Henry’s father was, in all honesty, a terrible person but Henry does what every child at some point longs to do: be a better version of their parents. But then the question of nature vs. nurture comes into play and the way Henry was raised makes one ask how far from your father can you ACTUALLY run?
The same behavior pattern of trying to be freed from one’s parents is evident in Henrietta, respectively named after her father. Henry trains her as his father trained him through a series of lessons in which you can see his warped view of society. He lectures Henrietta on evolution and the evolutionary ladder to perfection, the worthlessness of ordinary men, the inferiority of other races and the importance of familial purity. Henry, in these lectures, sounds no different than his father. Henrietta is quick to criticise her father’s poor pronunciation of Latin, his overall lack of knowledge in biology, and his racist views (Morgan 152). The relationship between Henry and his father, John Henry, is mirrored now a generation later by Henrietta and her father, Henry. No matter how hard Henry tried, he couldn’t outrun his father, even if he thought he did. Henrietta fell into the same mentality as young Henry and just as he turned the family farm into a horse farm, she gave herself to any man she could find in a bar and eventually fell in love with Allmon, the one man she knew her father would not approve of. As soon as she starts thinking for herself she realizes that she doesn’t want to be the kind of person her father is and the cycle of “freedom” begins again.
Where did Henrietta get her rebellious ideas from? Her opposition to her father began shortly after her mother left and the last thing she told Henrietta was, “The truth is men aren’t interested in your happiness; they’ll make you think that’s the case...they’re just selfish animals, and in the end, animals can’t hide their nature” (Morgan 117). Henrietta’s eyes are opened to the reality of being human, that your character is affected by the way in which you are raised, but nurture alone doesn’t set a character in stone. Those undesirable aspects of her father that she so desperately wants to leave behind will find their way back into her life. The very actions she does to rebel against him spawn from him, and therefore no matter how far she runs, she will never be free.
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