The Father

Quick Facts

A quiet clockmaker and the Narrator’s estranged parent. First appears through his son’s memories, then in the present-day reconciliation. Lives above and within a small clock-repair shop. Key relationships: his son (the Narrator) and his late wife (the Mother). Defining motif: time—its keeping, repair, and loss.

Who They Are

The Father is a craftsman whose love is expressed through steadiness rather than speech. For years, his silence hardens into distance in his son’s mind; the Father becomes a figure remembered more for what he didn’t say than what he did. As the Narrator confronts his own mortality and the silence between them, he slowly recognizes a form of care that moves in quiet, precise gestures. The Father’s presence ultimately reframes the novel’s exploration of Human Connection and Relationships: love can be ordinary, even wordless, and still be unwavering.

Personality & Traits

His reserve masks a deep fidelity. The Father keeps time for a living, and he keeps faith in the same way—patiently, methodically, even when misunderstood. What looks like aloofness is a commitment to act rather than declare, to repair rather than protest.

• Reserved and stoic: He struggles to show emotion openly; even at his wife’s funeral he hides his tears, which the Narrator misreads as indifference.
• Communicates through actions: He buys stamps to connect with his young son, sprints between inns to find a room for his ailing wife, and pours himself into repairing her watch when words fail.
• Dedicated craftsman: Often hunched over his workbench, he treats clocks with reverence—evidence of a worldview that honors small, careful work.
• Quietly wise: When the family adopts Cabbage, he offers a plainspoken truth about mortality that the Narrator can only later hear.
• Physical presence: Described as compact and muscular, he runs with unexpected grace on the hot-springs trip; by the end, the son recognizes the “spitting image” he shares—face, posture, gestures.

Character Journey

The Father’s arc is less a change in him than a change in how he is seen. Early on, he is the embodiment of absence—a man who “wasn’t there” when it mattered, especially when the Mother was dying. As the Narrator re-enters old rooms and memories, moments once used as evidence of neglect become proofs of devotion: the frantic search for an inn, the meticulous repair of a watch, the lifetime of quiet provision. This re-seeing transforms blame into understanding and finally into Regret and Acceptance. The Father does not become someone new; the son becomes someone who can recognize him.

Key Relationships

• The Narrator: Their four-year silence is the novel’s emotional wound. What begins as resentment—“You chose the watch over Mom”—is recast as recognition: the Father’s craft was his language of love. The son’s final choice to bridge the distance affirms their bond without demanding either man become more eloquent than he is.
• The Mother: She understands him instinctively and advocates for him, translating his quiet nature for their son. Even after death, she functions as their bridge; her final wish—that husband and son reconcile—guides the story’s movement toward tenderness.

Defining Moments

The Father is revealed in flashes—ordinary acts that, under pressure, show their meaning.

• The Mother’s death and the watch: By focusing on repairing her watch instead of remaining at her bedside, he seems to abandon her. Later, the Narrator realizes the repair was a desperate attempt to hold on—to make time keep her.
• The hot-springs trip: His sprint from inn to inn, breathless and determined, punctures the myth of indifference. For once, father and son are aligned by the same urgency: care for her.
• The day the clocks disappear: When clocks vanish, the son is forced to face his father’s life work—and, by extension, the man himself. Time’s absence reveals the shape of their absence.
• The final letter, delivered in uniform: The son’s choice to hand the letter to his father is an action that mirrors the Father’s own language—doing instead of saying. It closes the gap words could not.

Symbolism

As a clockmaker, the Father binds love to maintenance: he keeps, tunes, and repairs the ordinary machinery that makes life livable. His relationship with his son, frozen by grief, contrasts with his work’s premise that what’s broken can be tended back into motion. When time itself is threatened, the son finally sees that the Father’s devotion has always been measured not in speeches but in steady hands.

Essential Quotes

"Why not keep it?" you asked me. "We all die eventually anyway, both humans and cats. You’ll need to understand and accept that sooner rather than later."

This is the Father’s worldview in one breath: clear-eyed, unsentimental, and loving because it tells the truth. He refuses to shield his son from mortality, not to be cruel, but to prepare him to cherish what cannot last.

"He did. You know, he’s really very sweet. He just has a hard time expressing himself."

Through the Mother’s voice, the novel translates the Father’s silence. Her interpretation reframes absence as limitation, not lack of care, and plants the seed that will later grow into the son’s understanding.

I realized that, over time, I had come to look just like him. My face, my posture, my gestures. All the things I had hated for so long yet I couldn’t deny were now a part of me. I was his spitting image.

Recognition here is physical and moral: resemblance becomes empathy. By seeing his father in his own body, the Narrator accepts inheritance not as fate but as kinship, opening the door to forgiveness.