Throughout Ragtime, many historical figures make
appear as characters, though mostly as cameos. A few of them interact with the
fictional characters, namely Evelyn Nesbitt, Harry Houdini, and Emma Goldman.
The others are all cast in a negative light. J. P. Morgan is a conspiracy
theorist so arrogant that he thinks he is the Illuminati. Henry Ford developed
the assembly line in part so that his so-called fools of workers could manage
it. Theodore Roosevelt is introduced as a great conservationist, but the rest
of that sentence lists the several hundred animals he killed on a recent safari
(112).
They are
all awful in different ways, but they all agree on one thing: bigotry. Robert
Peary is hard on his Eskimo helpers because “They’re children and they have to
be treated like children” (73). When Morgan presents his theory about how all
people are, deep down, the same, Ford responds “Exceptin’ the Jews…They ain’t
like anyone else I know” (147). When Sarah tries to talk to Vice President Jim
Sherman, he recoils from her “black hand” and his bodyguards inflict lethal
injuries that nobody seems to think are important (191).
Portraying the famous people of the
era as bigoted fits with Doctorow’s portrayal of white culture as outlined in
the first paragraph (“There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants.”) (4). Bigotry
was the norm, and the historical figures probably were, by and large, racist.
But surely
these people had some redeeming qualities. Doctorow chooses not to mention them
if he can help it. For short descriptions, only the negative qualities come
through. Is this to make it easy for the reader to side against the historical
figures? The only ones that are easy to sympathize with, Houdini and Goldman,
are void of negative qualities and are from repressed groups themselves. Maybe
it is to make sure we are on Doctorow’s side.
