212 Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
calling into question the “reality” Doctorow and his narrator create, which, in turn,
challenges the “official” version of the Rosenbergs’ guilt.
Ragtime (1975), Doctorow’s best-known work, questions nostalgic or limited
perceptions of earlier times. The novel is set in New York City during the heyday of
ragtime music, roughly from 1902 to the beginning of World War I. It depicts a vast
array of historical figures, including Presidents William Howard Taft and Theodore
Roosevelt, the African American educator Booker T. Washington, Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Austria, the industrialist Henry Ford, the illusionist and escape artist
Harry Houdini, the psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, the oil
tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the financier J. P. Morgan, the inventor Thomas A.
Edison, the anarchist Emma Goldman, the radical labor leader “Big Bill” Haywood,
the African American ragtime composer Scott Joplin, the chorus girl and artist’s
model Evelyn Nesbit, and the explorer Robert E. Peary, who cross paths with the
members of three fictional families. Published during a time of social upheaval
when Americans questioned traditional gender roles, racial identity, and the reli-
ability of the government, the novel depicts a period that seems to be disciplined
and peaceful, a time when “Patriotism was a reliable sentiment”:
Trains and steamers and trolleys moved them from one place to another.
That was the style, that was the way people lived. Women were stouter then.
They visited the fleet carrying white parasols. Everyone wore white in sum-
mer. Tennis racquets were hefty and the racquet faces elliptical. There was a
lot of sexual fainting. There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants.This perception of uniformity and efficiency is embodied by the archetypal
upper-middle-class WASP family introduced to readers as Father, Mother, Little
Boy, and Mother’s Younger Brother. Appropriately, their money comes from the
manufacture of fireworks, flags, and bunting—the trappings of patriotism. This
vision, however, is interrupted when Father, setting off with Peary on an expedi-
tion to the North Pole, sees an incoming ship carrying immigrants: “Thousands
of male heads in derbies. Thousands of female heads covered with shawls. It was
a rag ship with a million dark eyes staring at him. Father, a normally resolute
person, suddenly foundered in his soul. A weird despair seized him.”
The narrative structure of Ragtime further challenges Father’s vision of an
order that puts him at the top of the social hierarchy. Doctorow introduces two
families who are marginalized by society and by mainstream historical accounts:
the poor immigrant Jews Tateh, Mameh, and Daughter; and the African Ameri-
cans Coalhouse Walker Jr., Sarah Walker, and their baby. The lives of the three
families become entangled when Mother’s Younger Brother joins in a search for
Tateh and the little girl and Mother takes in the Walkers’ baby. This intersection
dismantles Father’s assumed superiority based on race, class, and gender. Similarly,
the novel’s narrative voice, with its shifting perspectives and unclear identities,
demonstrates the limitations of historical perspective. The narrator knows Little
Boy’s thoughts but does not claim any specific relationship to Father, Mother, or
Mother’s Younger Brother. In later sections the narration shifts from third-person