The truly frustrating thing about Naturalism (as the literary period which this book is a representative of is called in Germany) in my opinion is that the end of each and every story is already determined from the outset. If the father is an alcoholic it automatically means that the son will end up succumbing to alcoholism as well, no matter how much he may dream of possibly breaking out of his destructive surroundings. The same holds true for this drama. There are no surprises as the reader can predict the outcome from the very first scene - and I'm not really into those sorts of plots :).
