While other authors might fill their pages with objects transformed into symbols, Doctorow has chosen to emphasize the human condition. In the depiction of this one minor character–a great escape artist, who also happens to be a Jewish boy struggling with emotional bondage over the death of his mother–we see that Doctorow’s greatest trick is not in the re-telling of important historical events, but in the revelation of personal histories and individual struggles that might normally be absent in historical narratives. The story begins with the impromptu meeting of the great magician Harry Houdini and the family from New Rochelle. It is no wonder then that the book was so well-received, winning the Arts and Letters Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, thus securing its place as an American classic. When readers encountered characters such as Emma Goldman, Mother’s Younger Brother, and Coalhouse Walker’s followers, it would have been nearly impossible not to see the burgeoning social forces of the day such as feminism, radicalism, and other components of the struggle for reform that were prevalent in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Readers in 1975 would have had no trouble relating to the story of three families–a middle/upper class family from New Rochelle, a family of Jewish immigrants, and an African-American couple with a newborn baby–struggling to adapt and to survive in a rapidly changing society, booming with technological innovation and industrialization, faced with civil rights struggles, injustice, and social unrest. The result is a carefully constructed allegory that not only exposes those less-spoken-of facets of American history and culture from the early 1900’s, but cleverly reveals a critical dialogue about contemporary times and long-standing issues such as freedom, identity, and justice. Doctorow was putting the final touches on his fourth novel, Ragtime, which would later be identified within the greater context of his career as his “breakthrough book.” Like those works of Doctorow’s that came before it, Ragtime stretches the boundaries of genre, weaving historical references into a fictional framework. In the mid-1970’s, as the Vietnam War was coming to a close, E. Music, and more particularly its role in social reflection and reform, has always been an attractive draw for youth, and with your help, students should easily draw connections between the world of Ragtime and the world in which they are currently, powerfully engaged. While this guide helps to break the novel down, unveiling the architecture of the story, illuminating themes, and providing prompts for further discussion, ultimately all of the text in this guide is meant to emphasize this last, most extraordinary quality–to remind readers why classic literature is important and to illuminate the ways in which we still relate to it today. It is fast–but not too fast, as Scott Joplin warns–loaded with history: powerful, entertaining, confrontational, revealing, contemporary.
Most extraordinarily, Doctorow has not only referenced ragtime music, he has gone so far as to channel it. Rather, it is about a critical time in our nation’s history (one that should be, for readers, quite reminiscent of our own time) and significant social and cultural issues– personal issues, Doctorow emphasizes–which were reflected in ragtime music years ago and which continue to be reflected in the musical forms that succeed it, as well as in literature, academic discussion, and perhaps most importantly, in domestic dialogue.
Despite the title of the novel and the employment of a dynamic central character who is a ragtime piano player, Doctorow’s novel is not about ragtime music. Doctorow has chosen to tether his ship to what is considered by many to be the first truly American genre of music–ragtime–a particularly resilient musical form which achieved popular success in the early 1900’s and saw revivals in the 40’s, 50’s, 70’s and 90’s. But while Fitzgerald and the Beats were engaged in a dialogue about the music of their own time, in this novel E. Scott Fitzgerald and the writers of the Beat Generation.
This is apparent in the structure and rhythm of texts from Homer to Hemingway, and of course, in more literal explorations of the cultural impact of music, as in the works of F. The traditions of literature and music have long been intertwined.
#Ragtime by e l doctorow pdf#
Teachers: If you'd like a printable version of this guide, download the PDF attachment at the bottom of this page.
0 kommentar(er)
