In Ragtime, time is the steady left hand bass line of a ragtime song. But the right hand is playing all sorts of things that make that passage of time special.
Doctorow is kind of a wizard. He's able to go inside the moments of history, to inhabit the New York of 1910, and then pull back and show us not only what people were thinking, but why they were thinking the way they were… and why it would change in the future. Pretty snazzy. How does he do it, you ask? Well, this novel finds those moments in an era when the tide of opinion is changing.
Questions About Time
- What trick does Doctorow use with Mother's Younger Brother to condense time? Is this effective?
- How does Ragtime show the process of aging? Do certain characters age more rapidly than others? If so, why?
- What is behind J.P. Morgan's fascination with Egypt? What do you make of the claim that ancient Egypt was especially fashionable at the turn of the century?
Chew on This
The characters that end up happy are the ones who embrace the passage of time. The characters that do not embrace the passage of time end up fairly miserable.
Thought it's written about the period between 1900 and 1917, Ragtime is colored by the time Doctorow was writing in: the early 1970s.