Faker

“There are other words for con man: crook, thief, criminal. But I never think of Dad that way. If you win on Jeopardy!, nobody thinks you’re being sleazy because you used your brain to make money.”

This excerpt of Trey’s thoughts shows the deeply ingrained rationalizations that he employs to maintain the misguided belief that his father’s grifting is justified. Trey’s admission that words like “thief” and “criminal” describe his dad shows that the protagonist intellectually understands his dad’s lack of ethics. However, because Trey loves his dad and appreciates everything that his father has given him, he refuses to condemn his father’s actions. Instead, he equates the family’s stolen wealth to the winnings of a game show contestant. This faulty metaphor is clearly on very shaky ground, and it foreshadows Trey’s eventual realization that his family’s actions are wrong.

“There’s what the marks believe and then there’s what’s really happening. You have to keep those things separate in your mind. The marks think they’re buying a piece of a show dog, but what they’re really buying is a piece of nothing. And the beauty of nothing is you can sell as much of it as you want. Five hundred percent of nothing is still nothing.”

In this passage, Trey’s dad explains the reasoning behind his grifting efforts, responding to his son’s confusion over how the family can sell the same dog to multiple marks. This response highlights the intelligence that Trey’s father possesses, but it is also clear that he is morally bankrupt and sees nothing wrong with fleecing innocent people. On the surface, this explanation reveals the mechanics of the con, but on a deeper level, the man’s unrepentant explanation foreshadows the fact that although he has yet to feel the consequences of his deceptions, his comeuppance will eventually force him to change his ways.