E.L. Doctorow presents an interesting story in his novel Ragtime. Based on certain events and people the reader can assume that it takes place in the first decade of the twentieth century before World War I. Doctorow writes his book in an intriguing way. He starts the narration of the book as a boy of a family that lives in New Rochelle, New York. Then, several times, he introduces new characters and writes a chapter or so from their point of view or that of someone close to them. For example, Harry Houdini, the famous magician the boy wishes he could see, ends up running his car into a pole outside the boy’s house. After two chapters of the beginning of their story, Doctorow includes a chapter about a poor immigrant family trying desperately to make ends meet. Next is the story of Evelyn Nesbit and her husband Henry K. Thaw who murdered the well-known architect Stanford White. When first reading this collection of little beginnings, I found them somewhat random and not connected. However, once you read a few more chapters, you begin to see the stories starting to interweave. The chapter that contains the story of Sigmund Freud and his visit to the United States mentions a man in Freud’s car who sees a beautiful woman holding the hand of a little girl outside on the street. You think nothing of it when you read it, but after reading the following chapters, the connection is made that the woman holding the girl’s hand is Evelyn Nesbit and the little girl is the daughter of Tateh, the man making paper cut outs as a living.
I found class discussion very illuminating when we discussed Ragtime. The quote from Scott Joplin that was included at the beginning of the book makes sense now. If you read the novel quickly and just read it to get through it, you will miss a lot of symbolism and important details. There are many hints at the conflict that immigration caused in America for instance. The boy’s father owns a flag making business that is booming because of the growing patriotism in America. This is due in large part to the growing number of immigrants in New York and the surrounding area since the immigrant population feels very patriotic and proud to be in this great country.
1 comment:
You have made some good conclusions about the author's intent with using multiple characters and gradually interweaving their stories. However, clarity is a bit of an issue with this blog. It would help the reader's understanding if you made use of transitions from topic to topic. The ending portion seems to be quite off from what you started with with little transitions used to announce the change in topic.
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