It’s difficult to know where Grandfather stands on the things Mother, Father and Younger Brother are focused on. Grandfather was a professor of Greek and Latin, which suggest a conservative personality or at the very least that he’s not focused on the avant-garde. He also seems to be content with his life in New Rochelle at the beginning of the book, which means he must be fine with at least most of the ideology that society is built on. Grandfather also seems relatively unaffected by Sarah’s death; in the passage immediately following her funeral, he celebrates spring: “Grandfather stood in the yard and gave a standing ovation” (196). There are also signs that Grandfather is more progressive. The stories Grandfather tells the Boy suggest that he has an untraditional world view: “They were stories of transformation […] Grandfather’s stories proposed to [the Boy] that the forms of life were volatile and that everything else in the world could as easily be something else.” (116)