Tom:
Is father a good person or a bad person?
In the beginning, there wasn't a lot of description about father, the writer only mentioned how Chris live with father and keep writing about Chris himself. Obviously, father was a good character in the beginning, he saved Chris from police station, he lied to Chris about mother’s death. However, there are still some points that indicate father was not a good character from the beginning. While Chris started to investigate who killed the dog, father warned Chris not to care about others business, however, we already known from the middle part of the book that father killed the dog, so it's their own business, not others. Father lied here and it mean he want to cover the truth that he killed the dog. From the second time father found Chris was looking for the killer of the dog, he fighter with Chris, it's a very normal thing that People want to find the killer and it's a small case. Father never hit Chris before, so it's the second point that father didn't want Chris found the killer because the killer is himself.
Then we all known mother didn't die, she left Chris’s father. In some ways I felt a little bit shame for father. And Mrs Shears came and helped them. And father did two things wrong:
1 he thought his relationship was good enough with Mrs shears That they can live together.
2 he killed the dog.
The first thing wasn't a big deal because they can rebuild the relationship with Mrs shears. However he had an argument with Mrs shears and their relationship fell quickly. From this point we can see a poor father want mental comfort but failed. Then he thought their status is lower than a dog, which made father killed the dog and became a bad character.
We can predict what Chris’s future will be and we can also say although father did a lot of things that he thought was right, but he once and once hurt others by doing these things, which lead him become a bad Character.