Father Out of Place

In Ragtime, there is a recurring theme of out of place characters - people that don't fit into a social group, like Evelyn and Morgan, or people that have yet to find their place in the world, like Tateh. Father also joins this category of unique characters when he returns from his expedition to the North.

At the beginning of the novel, Father had fit snugly into his happy family life. Only after his long adventure to the North Pole does he find his happy family is no longer the same family he left behind a year ago, and he is unable to fit in like he used to. His son, the little boy, is no longer so little, having grown in height and intellect. He "intelligently discussed Halley's Comet," while Father felt "childlike beside him." Mother's Younger Brother now works ridiculously hard and is losing his hair, no longer the same idle young man from before. Mother has become well-versed in business, seemingly able to run the business without Father, and reads Emma Goldman and other feminist papers. Mother developing a side of her that Father does not know alarms him, to say nothing of the fact that Mother has become more open and willing to make her own decisions. One of the biggest decisions that she makes while Father is away is letting the African-American girl, Sarah, and her baby stay in their house.

It is the existence of Sarah and her baby in the family's home that prompts further change that Father must deal with. Coalhouse Walker, Jr. comes to their house one day looking for Sarah. Father considers his weekly visits a nuisance, and when Mother decides to let him have tea with them one week, he "questioned the propriety of this." To him, having a white family host a black man was unthinkable. In his mind, Coalhouse Walker should act like the stereotype of his race and lower themselves in the presence of white people. Mother uses the example of Roosevelt hosting Booker T Washington to convince him that yes, it is perfectly fine for a respectable white family to serve tea to a respectable black man like Coalhouse Walker. The world has kept progressing since Father left, and now Father must catch up.

Not only have Father's surroundings changed, but Father himself has changed a lot as well. His appearance for one; when he looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, he sees the "gaunt, bearded face of a derelict, a man who lacked a home." His clothes no longer fit him, and "ballooned from him as shapeless as the furs he had worn for a year." He has a slight limp now, and prefers to sit in front of the heater like an elderly man. He's returned to his warm home, yet there are lingering feelings of still being in the cold North; when the housemaid used an electric suction cleaner, he "thought he heard an Arctic wind." It seems the Arctic has become more familiar to him than New Rochelle, and he must adjust to everything that has changed in his absence, both inside and outside his home.