My Old Man (short story)

Critical attention focuses chiefly on three issues: Sherwood Anderson's influence, the story's narrative structure, and the question of whether Joe's father is moral or immoral.

[4] During his absence, Bill Bird's Parisian Three Mountains Press published a small collection of Hemingway's work, Three Stories and Ten Poems, which included "My Old Man".

[6] The story opens with Joe living in Italy with his father, Butler, who is a steeplechase jockey, riding in races on tracks in the Milan and Turin area.

They pack their belongings and move to Paris, taking rooms at Maisons-Laffitte, where Joe plays in the woods with the local boys.

[5] Hemingway critic Thomas Strychaz writes that "My Old Man" is generally accepted as the weakest story in In Our Time, yet he says its importance lies in advancing themes of American expatriates in post-World War I Europe, weak or "toppled fathers", social corruption and innocence betrayed.

[10] Hemingway critic Wendolyn Tetlow writes "My Old Man" is an initiation story, similar to "Indian Camp" where a young boy's innocence is stripped away, and that it is told from the child's point-of-view in a first person narrative.

[11] Despite the childlike tone of the narrative, which often displays sentimentality or nostalgia for the boy's father, Joe is fully aware of the intent of the comment he overhears.

Butler is perceived variously as crooked and deeply corrupt, morally bereft, to "not a son of a bitch" or "benevolently honorable".

Phillip Sipiora writes that the narrative mode, which filters the reader's view through the eyes of a 12-year-old child, shapes the confusion about Butler's honor.

It is a complex narrative style, presenting multiple temporal perspectives and a subjective perception of reality, which make it difficult for the reader to know the truth.