Chapter 40
of E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime wraps up
every bit of the plot and concludes with the end of World War I. What sort of
world is left after “the era of Ragtime [has] run out” (Doctorow 319)? On the
whole, not one that gives much hope for the change that characters like
Coalhouse, Emma Goldman, and Younger Brother were seeking.
The most
obvious problem is that Coalhouse and Younger Brother both die. They are both
lost to history, as evidenced by the fact that no historian has found evidence
for either of them. Although Goldman has fallen into obscurity, she was
somewhat well-known when Doctorow wrote Ragtime
because the feminist movement celebrated her.
All of them
fail to effect lasting change because of the government. Coalhouse gets gunned
down by police having only gotten his car back. Younger Brother is killed by
troops from the Mexican government while his revolution is destroyed by
American Marines. Goldman gets deported, probably for being an anarchist.
Only a few
characters end up being happy. Mother and Tateh get married and live a happy
life. Mother loves Tateh even though he is a Jewish socialist, which could
indicate that future generations could be more tolerant. But the success of
anti-Semites like Henry Ford puts a damper on that. The only other happy ending
is Harry K. Thaw, who gets himself released from the insane asylum and who
marches in the Armistice Day parades. If one were to list the characters based
on how much they deserved to be happy, Harry K. Thaw would be at the bottom.
But the system that lets him be in the upper crust of society clearly is still
going strong.
It's interesting how the end of the book seems kind of anticlimactic, at least in the sense that throughout the rest, there seemed to be kind of a mood that society was changing and there was progress on a lot of fronts. There was also of course a lot of personal change with the characters, with Mother and Tateh getting married and adopting Coalhouse and Sarah's son, which makes the family end up at a very different place than in the beginning. But even so it seems like despite these changes on a small scale, the status quo and the world as a whole doesn't really change very much.
ReplyDeleteI think that the changes Emma Goldman and Coalhouse Walker hoped for did not come about as they planned, but through the book, we can see some small hint's of changing times. For example, at the end, people have definitely accepted that immigrants and black people do exist in America (see Mother and Tateh's family). Also, Father's ignorance and old mindset is starting to become less mainstream.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's an interesting point that you see - the government is the end all be all in Doctorow's world, and it prevents the characters from having a real impact on the world. I think this is especially interesting because of the way that Doctorow shows Morgan to surpass even government, in a way where he sees money to be more powerful than any governing body.
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