Becoming, Yet Staying Tateh

Tateh’s story in Ragtime starts out in the cramped, chaotic Lower East Side. He’s barely holding on, making little silhouettes to earn enough for himself and his daughter. Doctorow calls him “frail” and “white-haired” (48), and it feels like he’s aged decades just by living in poverty. But what’s interesting is that even when he seems beaten down, the thing we remember about him most is how much he clings to the little girl. He won’t let Evelyn Nesbit’s charity touch them, not because it wouldn’t help, but because it would be humiliating to admit he couldn’t protect his little girl. Pride and love sort of blur together for him, and that’s the one thing that keeps him steady. Even though Tateh spent his days creating art for an extremely humble price. Later in the novel He joins boycotts, fumes at the unfairness around him, he tries to fight back in the only ways he can. We watch him harness these feelings of pride and love in a different way. When he came so close to losing his daughter, it was clear that his motivation wasn't just the typical "American dream", his entire motivation was bound in her, if he lost her, there would be no point in fighting. His devotion doesn't belong to any political system; it belongs to his daughter. The moment when he nearly loses the little girl shows how close everything is to falling apart. Without the little girl, there’s really no Tateh at all. Almost surprisingly, he gets noticed, and his work carries him into the film industry. Doctorow reintroduces him again, but now he’s “Baron Ashkenazy,” with “shining black hair” and clothes that make him look nothing short of a new man (254). It’s huge transitional point for the audience, it almost feels like we’re meeting a different character. Despite that, the readers never really call him by that new name. We keep saying Tateh, as if the title and polish don’t matter and the core of who he is has stayed the same. That’s where his transformation feels complicated. On the outside, he’s changed everything about himself for his daughter, and he wants to wipe away “every tenement stench and filthy immigrant street” from her memory (259). On the inside, though, we still see those moments where he bends in on himself, “like the old Tateh” (258), trembling, uncertain, slipping back into the man who almost lost everything. He can’t escape that, not fully. Perhaps that’s the point. His “good ending” isn’t about becoming a baron or a filmmaker, but about proving that the love that defined him in poverty is still what defines him in wealth. No matter how much he transforms, we know him as Tateh, because being a father is the one thing he never lets go of.