A complacent young man
The protagonist’s father during the entire narration proves what a mean-spirited fellow he really is: all he cares for is money, he is obsessed with the idea of prosperous life, and it is shown from the very beginning when he on his way to the house of his future wife “jingles the coins in his pocket, thinking of the witty things he will say”. His idea of life and happiness is mostly based on money, but it really matters very little when it comes to love. Another prove of his high opinion of himself is his judgement of the characters and the plot of the novel the mother is telling him about “for he feels the utmost superiority and confidence when he approves and condemns the behavior of other people”.
Opening herself
The mother seems to be a very restrained and self controlled person. She starts a conversation of the novel she is reading thus showing hoe intelligent and interesting she might be. And when the father offers to go the Coney Island – an amusement park she finds such pleasures “inferior” as such “riotous amusements being beneath the dignity of so dignified a couple”. But at the end we see how stubborn she is when the father demurs to enter a fortune’teller’s booth, between them starts a quarrel. So the mother is not so self controlled as it seems at the first sight, it looks like these two deserve one another.
Sooner or later everyone dies
Another ironic situation which helps to understand the characters of both of the beloved is their attitude towards health. They both are “full of theories of what is good to eat and not good to eat, and sometimes they engage in heated discussions of the subject”. But as a rule the only possible outcome of such discussions is the father’s announcement “made with a scornful bluster that you have to die sooner or later anyway”. Such an outcome prove that these discussions are really just a means of their own self realization in front of each other.
