Father a Boomer
Honestly, this entire book just feels like OK Boomer before it was cool. All I've learned from this book was that if you are a boomer you won't enjoy life. Hear me out...
The Father holds on a lot of traditional beliefs and thoughts. We find that he is happier when people abide in their gender roles and their social expectations. We see that he doesn't really live in the present but rather constantly comparing the current time vs the old days. An example of this situation is at the ballgame where all he did was compare the game versus his Harvard games from ages ago. He couldn't enjoy the game because of the fact that there are immigrants in them. Like, I thought he was an old man just from the way he behaves, except he's not, he's like in his 30s or 40s. As a result, He felt isolated, lost, and chronically unhappy. He reminds me of that stereotypical cranky old man telling you to get off his lawn.
Mother, on the other hand, accepted the change. Because of Father's absence, Mother started to pick up new responsibilities and was empowered by them. Soon after taking on the family business, she gained the confidence to start exploring herself. Unlike Father, she was unsatisfied with her old life of being a mother and a wife and started to embrace the changes. An example of this is when she started to discover her sexuality (Father finds sex to be immoral vs Mother is open to experimentation). I think at one point, she said something about Father not satisfying her.
I personally think that Mother was moving forward with her life while Father was stuck in time and miserable. So basically, don't be a boomer and just enjoy life (especially when you are a middle-aged man.)
The Father holds on a lot of traditional beliefs and thoughts. We find that he is happier when people abide in their gender roles and their social expectations. We see that he doesn't really live in the present but rather constantly comparing the current time vs the old days. An example of this situation is at the ballgame where all he did was compare the game versus his Harvard games from ages ago. He couldn't enjoy the game because of the fact that there are immigrants in them. Like, I thought he was an old man just from the way he behaves, except he's not, he's like in his 30s or 40s. As a result, He felt isolated, lost, and chronically unhappy. He reminds me of that stereotypical cranky old man telling you to get off his lawn.
Mother, on the other hand, accepted the change. Because of Father's absence, Mother started to pick up new responsibilities and was empowered by them. Soon after taking on the family business, she gained the confidence to start exploring herself. Unlike Father, she was unsatisfied with her old life of being a mother and a wife and started to embrace the changes. An example of this is when she started to discover her sexuality (Father finds sex to be immoral vs Mother is open to experimentation). I think at one point, she said something about Father not satisfying her.
I personally think that Mother was moving forward with her life while Father was stuck in time and miserable. So basically, don't be a boomer and just enjoy life (especially when you are a middle-aged man.)
I agree that Father's character definitely represents who we would think of as a "boomer."
ReplyDeleteIt was almost as if he went off the the Arctic as a nineteenth-century man, and when he came back, he was completely unable to adapt. This is an imperfect analogy, but it reminded me of species from the Arctic that are going extinct in the new climate. Maybe his false sense of "isolation" comes from this significant time gap.
The fact that Father was killed off and replaced by Tateh, as we discussed in class, could represent how his existence in and of itself cannot function in the modern world. Do you think that the other characters that are killed off represent something different?
One thing I found interesting was that Mother's Younger Brother was basically the complete opposite of Father. He was able to not only embrace modern ideas and change but also fight for it. Younger Brother learned to not dwell on his past with Evelyn after talking to Emma Goldman. Yet he died. Both of the white men of the family died, one being radical and the other conservative. What does this represent? I'm not sure, but it's something that came to mind and interesting to ponder.
DeleteFather is definitely the book's Boomer. Another blog post made a similar case for Morgan, and I completely agree with both of these arguments. They're both completely unable to adapt to new situations, new ideas, new methods, and when they try to, they remain unhappy and totally out of reach with everybody else in the new century. I like how you contrasted Mother and Father's development. I find it especially interesting how Mother's adaption came from her empowering herself, rather than conforming to Father's 19th century ideas about how a woman should act and what she should know.
ReplyDeleteI definitely am a fan of the idea that Father was unable to move into the next century and adapt to the times. In class, we cited this as the reason that his character died aboard the Lusitania. Throughout the novel, he is shown as being behind on the times, whether it is through his hobby of exploration, his hesitance about Coalhouse, or his ignorance about ragtime, he is clearly someone who is still stuck in the world of "no immigrants or negroes" in his white suburb.
ReplyDelete"Boomer" in your formulation doesn't simply refer to a generational identity (a "baby boomer," referring to those born in the decade and a half after World War II, which would mean the "middle-aged" generation in _Ragtime_ by analogy)--it refers to a particularly intransigent attitude toward change. Because, as you note, Mother is from Father's generation, and she is now reading Emma Goldman and getting some new ideas about gender and power, while also being very open to Tateh, first as a friend and then as a husband. And when you say that "boomers" in this novel don't enjoy life, I want to point out that Tateh and Father are of the same generation, even though it can be hard to remember that fact. Tateh very much seems to be "enjoying life" when we meet him and his daughter in Atlantic City--and the effect is contagious. He is very open to change, as an early innovator in animation and motion-picture technology, and we see him reinvent himself from a socialist mill-worker into a European film mogul.
ReplyDeleteSo to be a "boomer," then and now, means having a certain suspicion and fear of change. The characters who survive are those who adapt.