How does the blue boat scene in "Philadelphia Here I come" mirror the major themes in the play?

Gar's memory of the blue boat and of his father and himself fishing when he was a child is not shared by his father, just as certain 'memories' of his father's about Gar's childhood are not shared by Madge, the housekeeper. This shows the extent to which Gar and his father have become emotionally separated from each other down the years: each of them has built his own narrative of the past, or memory, because they have not been sharing in feeling or emotion for such a long time. The episode underlines the failure of communication that is one of the play's key themes, the emotional inhibition of the Irish male, or perhaps of males generally.