Ragtime by

R.L.Doctorow

Indranil SarkarIndia.

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Ragtime(1975)

Ragtime Ragtime is a type of music popular

among the black African Americans in between 1893 and 1917.

Its name is believed to be a contraction of the term “ragged time,” which refers to its rhythmically broken up melodies.

It originated in Missouri. Ragtime means music with a

syncopated melody. It was quite different from Jazz which preceded it.

Ragtime is considered the first completely American music.

Scott Joplin is considered the most famous composer of Ragtime music.

Ernest Hogan was an innovator and key pioneer who helped develop the musical genre, and is credited with coining the term ragtime.

Ragtime is a novel by E.L.Doctorow.

It was published in 1975.

There is a unique blending of historical and fictional characters and their various life-episodes in it.

It reveals the American life during the progressive era.

It is a ‘Fictionalized History’ of the ‘Big American Dream’ in

between 1890 and 1900.

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Symbol of the AMERICAN DREAM

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Ragtime Edgar Lawrence Doctorow(1931-)

is one of the most popular novelists in American literature.

He is popular in writing Historical novels.

His first novel, a fictionalized account of the piracy of ‘nuclear secrets’ to Russia and the subsequent trial of Julius and Rosenberg titled ’The Book of Daniel’(1971) is considered as his ‘masterpiece’.

His second novel ‘Ragtime’(1975) was called one of 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library.

It initiated a new genre in English fiction called ‘African American’ novels.

RagtimeCharacters

Historical Characters:- J.P.Morgan Henry Ford  Booker.T.Washington Evelyn Nesbit Harry K. Thaw  Harry Houdini Emma Goldman Carl Yung Coalhouse Walker Sigmund Freud Emiliano Zapata Matthew Peary Willie Conklin etc.

Fictional Characters:- Father Mother A little Boy Grand father Sarah A little Girl Mother’s Younger brother Tateh Mameh etc.

Context- One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry

Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside the house of Father where he was living with Mother, Mother’s younger brother,a little boy and Grandfather.

And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician Coalhouse Walker, from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence and ultimate death.

Source- Good reads review.

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Father built a house here.

The story of ‘Ragtime’ begins in a town called New Rachael at the outskirt of Newyork City.

Father, a prosperous white man has built a house in the Broadway avenue of New Rachael.

He lives with Mother, a Little boy, Mother’s younger brother and Grandfather.

In the opposite side of the road is the slum dwellings of Immigrant African American negroes.

There lived a washerwoman named Sarah with her little daughter.

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Coalhouse Walker, a finely dressed black ‘Ragtime’ musician used to pay visit to the locality in his newly purchased Model T car.

He wanted to meet Sarah. When enquired, Mother did not like to inform him anything about Sarah. Sarah,too,initially refused to meet Coalhouse. However,she finally met Coalhouse and agreed to marry him when

Coalhouse disclosed the reasons of his earlier faults . In the next Sunday Coalhouse met a catastrophic situation while passing

by the Emarald firework factory. The white agitators attacked him and destroyed his car. Coalhouse’s

repeated insistence that he was not against the agitators and respectful towards their causes went in vein.

Humiliated and assaulted Coalhouse rushed to the Police station to seek justice.

The sergeant on duty did not pay any attention to his complain.Instead,he arrested Coalhouse for some fabricated charges.

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Injustice, assaults and humiliations made Coalhouse adamant .He wanted to engage a lawyer to plead his case.

So, he gave the money that he saved for the marriage to Sarah and asked her to find a lawyer.

But, no lawyer agreed to plead his case just because he was a black and the case was against the whites.

The minister paid a visit to the nearby locality. Desperate Sarah tried to meet Mr. Taft's Vice-President to

submit a petition to the federal government on Coalhouse's behalf.

At this, a security guard hurt her brutally. She fell down and died subsequently.

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Sarah's death news made Coalhouse utterly frustrated. Rejected by all civil authorities, he became resolute to take

revenge against the offenders. He made an association with some likeminded people.

Mother’s younger brother also joined him. A bomb explosion engineered by this group in front of the

Emarald factory killed six workers. At this the police wanted to punish them. The extremist group took shelter at the library of J.P.Morgan

as it was the most secured hideout for their cause.

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‘Coalhouse Walker representing the American Dream”

Booker T.Washington tried to negotiate between the police and the agitators.

Agitators refused because Washington’s approach appeared too compromising.

Father returned from his North Pole expedition and felt sorry hearing the total affair.

He met Coalhouse and arranged a meeting with the The District Attorney Charles S. Whitman.

The Police sergeant played a dubious game. Outwardly he promised to grant all the demands of the

agitators including to return Coalhouse’s Model T Car.They even projected the car in front of the library.

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But, when Coalhouse tried to go there, the police fired at him from behind.Father heard the sound and came to realize how he was cheated.Father, too, died a few week later.

Mother’s brother managed to escape.

He became the owner of the car and began roaming all through the locality with his friends.He was killed by some unidentified killers within a year.

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An immigrant family, consisting of Mameh, Tateh, and the little girl, live in the Lower East Side in utter poverty.

Evelyn Nesbit visits the Lower East Side, where she becomes enchanted with Tateh's daughter, and soon her visits become regular.

Mother's Younger Brother begins to follow Evelyn everywhere without her knowledge.

Emma Goldman, criticizes Evelyn for employing her sexuality to gain prominence in capitalistic society.

Mother rescues and claims responsibility for a newborn baby she discovers buried alive in her backyard; she soon learns it is the child of a black washwoman named Sarah.

Tateh finds a novelty store in Philadelphia where the owner agrees to buy the movie books Tateh has invented.

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Very soon Tateh saw the smile of fortune and became a millionaire.

The social and familial problems brought the little girl and the little boy closer to one another.

The novel ended with the marriage of Mother and Tateh.

****

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RagtimeFord

Model T.

RagtimeThe

vandalism

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J.P.Morgan’s Library

Ragtime is variously characterized— Some critics call it simply a ‘Historical novel’.

To some, it is the beginning of the genre of ‘African American novel’.

Some others view it as a postmodern novel although it was written in 1975 and the story began in 1902.

A group of critics prefer calling it ‘a Progressive–era novel, representing the American Dream.

It is also called a ‘national bildungsroman’ .

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The narrator of the novel is Anonymous and omniscient. The narrative voice is ambiguous. Perhaps it is the little boy at a later point; perhaps it is Tateh's little girl; perhaps it is both of them.

This novel is narrated in the third person omniscient; occasionally the narrator speaks in the first person plural.

The Difficulty of Accepting Change; The Struggle for Stability and Meaning; The Impact of Technological Development on Culture; Imprisonment and False Liberation etc. are the main

themes of the novel.

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Summing Up “Ragtime” depicts the class struggles and human foibles

that underpin moments of innovation and crisis.

Doctorow enters the minds and lives of different slices of the American pie, with New York narratives about J.P. Morgan, a financial titan who controlled much of the country; a middle-class family in New Rochelle; and a desperately poor Jewish family living in a tenement on the Lower East Side.

But,he does not preach. He just animates the facts.

Source:"RAGTIME" AND THE AMERICAN DREAM by Daniel Arizona.

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References & links:- Ragtime by E.L.Doctorow i. www.sparknotes.com’ ii.www.musicals.net/cgibin/synopsis?

sn=65&show=Ragtime Iii.www.wikipedia.org iv. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragtime_(novel) www.goodreads.com/author/show/12584.E_L_Doctorow www.google images.com

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