Tateh’s “Transformation”?

The Tateh we see by the end of Ragtime appears to be a very different man from how he was when Evelyn Nesbit visited him and his daughter in the Lower East Side. As readers, we are supposed to think that Tateh has overcome all his misfortunes, and that he is one of the few cases of a character having a “good ending” in Ragtime. In fact, it seems almost silly to question whether he has truly changed, for his personality seems to have taken a complete 180 and his appearance is completely unrecognizable. Consider page 254, where we are introduced to Tateh, now known as the “Baron Ashkenazy,” who is described as a “small, limber man who wore jodhpurs and a white silk shirt open at the neck” with “shining black hair”. Compared to when we first saw him as a “frail” and “white-haired” man, he has fundamentally altered himself, at least physically (48). However, these actions that he had taken to transform himself are by definition surface level, and essentially act as a coverup for what he truly remains, as for example, he has only hidden his white hair and has not truly gotten rid of it.

As we start to analyze Tateh’s personality, the idea that he has turned into a completely different man starts to fall short. It is true that Tateh is no longer reclusive, for he now seems to be unable to stop talking when in the company of others. But his pride has not gone away, and in some ways has increased from before. For example, when he is describing to Mother and Father his career making films, he makes no attempt of acting humble, and embarrasses Father when he explains that each play he has made has brought “ten thousand dollars in receipt" (256). Tateh back at the Lower East Side was also a proud man, as he was the president of the “Socialist Artists’ Alliance of the Lower East Side,” and he despised Evelyn Nesbit’s attempts to help him and his daughter out (44). If anything, Tateh has much more to be proud of now, and that has caused him to become much more vain. In this case, Tateh has not changed. 

So if Tateh hasn’t changed much, why has he tried to project to others that he is now a new man? The answer is his daughter. Tateh himself has made it clear that he aimed to “drive from [the little girl’s] memory every tenement stench and filthy immigrant street,” and to do so he has undergone this transformation, at least on the outside (259). His goal is to make his daughter feel as if their lives have changed for the better, and that the past is gone now. But we can see glimpses of Tateh’s old self, like how in moments of solitude, he “reflected on his audacity”. He clearly is not completely comfortable with his current position, and his “periods of trembling” and “smoking on cigarettes without a holder” shows how he still has scars left over from his days of poverty. For all that he has done to make it seem like he is composed and confident, on his own he has no daughter, no audience to perform in front of, and he can’t help but show signs of weakness and self-doubt. Doctorow ends off describing Tateh in his moments of solitude as “slumped and bent over in defeat like the old Tateh,” which once again highlights how in these moments by himself, he regresses to his old state, doubting himself and his worth (258).

Another instance of his old self remaining is when we see him at the hotel, where mother notes he is an “...excited person whose eyes darted here and there, like a child’s, afraid of what they might miss” (254). This can be interpreted in two ways, one that Tateh has reinvented himself “like a child” and is trying to learn as about the world as much as possible, or that he truly is “afraid” of missing out what the world has to offer, paranoid that should he fail to truly be in the moment, he may risk returning to his former self. The latter point is what I find to be more fitting, for Tateh has worked so hard to pull himself out of poverty that his position now seems to be unreal. As mentioned earlier, during times of solitude he finds himself questioning his position in the world, and finds everything happening to him to be overwhelming at times. By being out with others in the world, he is absorbing as much of his new life as possible, with the intent of leaving his difficult past as far back as possible.

Tateh essentially needs the company of others to maintain his new self, or else he faces the risk of falling back to his old self. With all this being said, Tateh has definitely changed from what he used to be, but he still carries over many of his old morals and insecurities. His marriage to Mother may bring forth even more change, and could be the final steps needed to at least completely hide the old Tateh from the world.