Ragtime

Mother is Father’s wife. She enables the family’s relationship with Coalhouse Walker, Jr. by housing Sarah and her infant son. In many ways, Mother represents a modern, progressive flexibility that contrasts with Father’s rigidity to change. She defends Sarah against the police and doctors who wish to punish her for child abandonment, reflecting her convictions as an ally; this contrasts with Father’s abandonment of Coalhouse. When visiting Atlantic City, Mother is enraptured by the foreign visitors and their worldliness. At the end of the novel, she marries the immigrant Tateh, further reflecting her connection to a modern, globally-involved America that would emerge at the end of the First World War. Mother is also linked to the novel’s theme, Navigating Sex, Love, and Freedom. At the beginning of the novel, she hates sex and views it merely as a duty of marriage. However, by the end she is in a loving marriage with Tateh and enjoys her sexuality and agency.

Similar to Mother, Mother’s Younger Brother is connected to the burgeoning modern America. However, his is an advanced connection to modernity and progress; as a member of a younger generation, Mother’s Younger Brother has stronger vigor and passion for the future. He is also more outraged over American systems of power, due largely to his association with Emma Goldman and her fellow Leftists. The allyship of Mother’s Younger Brother takes on a far more radical dimension than that of his older sister. He joins the Coalhouse movement in solidarity against police violence and racism. Similar to Mother’s connections to internationalism, Mother’s Younger Brother takes an interest in global events and fights in the Mexican Revolution, broadening his radical scope and deepening his critical stance against American imperialism. Notably, Father—the embodiment of American imperialism—does not get along with Mother’s Younger Brother, and the two argue constantly. This reaffirms that the characters’ ideologies are in opposition.

Coalhouse Walker, Jr. is central to the novel’s critiques of American racism and systems of power. Coalhouse is a successful ragtime musician and a member of the upper class. He owns a Model T Ford, an especially rare possession for Black Americans of the time. As the novel advances, Coalhouse experiences waves of loss. Coalhouse’s fiancée, Sarah, dies at the hands of the police. The local Emerald Isle fire department destroy his prized car. Both acts stem from America’s systemic racism. Coalhouse tries to go through legal means for resolution; the justice system shuts him down because it upholds racist systems.

Subsequently, Coalhouse starts a radical movement. When he and his men take over Pierpont Morgan’s library, Coalhouse negotiates the restoration of his car, but the police kill him when he surrenders. Doctorow suggests that people of color in the United States have no legal recourse to assert their humanity and advocate for themselves. At the same time, Doctorow implies, state violence has a strong hold in America, and radical acts against the system are only returned with death.

Tateh is a Jewish immigrant and initially an art peddler on the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His first wife is Mameh, and the two have an unnamed daughter. Tateh’s story embodies immigrant life in the early 20th century, with all of its ups and downs. He suffers poor living conditions, low wages, and state violence in New York and Lawrence, Massachusetts. In Parts 1 and 2, Tateh embodies the struggles of America’s working classes and the immense—often impossible—pressures they faced at the hands of capitalist powers in early 20th-century America.

In Part 3, Tateh is reintroduced as the Baron Ashkenazy when Mother encounters him on the Atlantic City beachfront. By the end of the novel, Tateh is a famous filmmaker in California with Mother as his new wife. His arc reflects the possibilities of American life. Doctorow balances out his critique of America’s flawed system through Tateh’s narrative arc, suggesting that immigrants can elevate their status and achieve the “American dream”—though not without patience and struggle.

Harry Houdini is a name many readers will recognize, as he was indeed a famous magician and illusionist from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Houdini was a Jewish immigrant whose real name was Erik Weisz. He toured the Western hemisphere, pulling off miraculous escapes and daring stunts. In Ragtime, he occupies a central role. After his car crash outside the family’s New Rochelle house, Houdini stages an escape trick and encounters Harry K. Thaw. Later, Houdini becomes enraptured by flight and purchases a biplane. This draws the attention of the German Imperial Army, and he begins lecturing officers on aviation and meets the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In his links to modes of transport, political leaders, and modernity—most often expressed through his illusions, whose ingenuity puzzle and even frighten audiences—Houdini articulates the theme A World on the Cusp of Change.

Evelyn Nesbit is central to the novel’s messaging around female objectification and sexual agency. Evelyn was a real person and her relationships with Thaw and White in the novel were both true to life. When Evelyn is first introduced, she is going through her divorce with Harry K. Thaw, her abusive and controlling husband. Thaw murdered Evelyn’s lover, Stanford White, and agrees to divorce Evelyn if she testifies in Thaw’s defense at his murder trial.

Evelyn’s tumultuous relationships with men are challenged when she meets Emma Goldman. Through Tateh, the little girl, and Goldman, Evelyn glimpses the lifestyle of the working class. Evelyn becomes enraptured by Goldman’s lectures on the systemic oppression of women in America and how marriage is a form of domestic servitude. However, Evelyn’s character arc reflects the deeply-entrenched systemic oppression of women. While Evelyn opens her eyes to the oppressed life she has been living, she ultimately rejects radicalism. Evelyn returns to what she is comfortable with, rejecting the difficult path of radical resistance and returning to her comfortable oppression with sexist men. Evelyn ultimately fades into obscurity at the end of the novel, having been discarded by the patriarchal system that no longer has use for her.