Get With the Times
What's more quintessentially American than the struggle for and against change? And who would be a more quintessential American than a patriotic, upstanding, self-made bunting and fireworks manufacturer? Father is the perfect encapsulation of the late 19th century businessman; he’s no J.P. Morgan or Andrew Carnegie, but he has successfully played the capitalist game. He has a stout manse and a healthy family and a stable life. I think it’s fair to say that father represents the “old guard” of the novel (as opposed to, say, Tateh’s newness as an innovator). Father represents the traditional values of the time, and is struggling to maintain his place in society as a familial provider and role model. Instead, he becomes bitter, disagreeable, and occasionally rude as he begins to see his former status slipping from him.
In one of the first scenes of the novel, Father spots a “rag ship, with a million dark eyes staring at him. Father, a normally resolute person, suddenly foundered in his soul. A weird sense of despair seized him. [...] He watched the ship until he could see it no longer. Yet aboard her were only more customers, for the immigration population set great store by the American flag” (Doctorow 13). The ship (the Roosevelt) is a harbinger of what’s to come for Father. While he is playing arctic expedition, the Tatehs of the world are taking inspiration from Emma Goldman. When he returns, he has seen his family mature and flourish without him. Mother, of course, relishes in her newfound sense of purpose, and the little boy is said to have taken on a “secret intellectual life”. When Father returns home, his pillaged arctic treasures are described as “the embarrassing possessions of a savage”, demonstrating Father’s seeming primitivism and outdatedness.
When Father takes the little boy to a baseball game later on, he is reminded of his playing days, when “the players addressed each other as Mister and played their game avidly, but as sportsmen, in sensible uniforms before audiences of collegians who rarely numbered more than a hundred.” Father remembers a more civil version of the game he is currently experiencing. In fact, Father spends most of the game worrying about the hecklers in the crowd and how uncouth the players are. This is as close to a “well, back in MY day” moment as Father could get. Father reflects that “He was disturbed by his nostalgia. He’d always thought of himself as a progressive. [...] He felt his father’s loss of fortune had the advantage of saving him from the uncritical adoption of the prejudices of his class” (Doctorow 230-231). A great dose of irony. Father thinks he has been “saved” from becoming a lowly and judgemental individual, but has become prejudicial, just in ways he hadn’t expected to. Father thinks of himself as progressive relative to the time period he remains stuck in, but not with regards to the present day.
A few other examples of Father’s ingrained old-fashioned behavior that I’d like to mention: he scoffs at “Baron Ashkenazy”’s mentioning of specific profits during dinner, and asks for Coalhouse Walker to play “coon songs” for the family. Father is a perfect representation of the cyclical nature of American history, where Tateh helps play his occupational counterpart (though Tateh is posed oppositely to Harry Houdini in other ways). Each generation, not necessarily separated by age but by ideology, fits into a given mold, each jockeying for position. Father, the businessman and faux-gentleman, is distressed by his coming obsolescence. But soon too will Tateh’s home-grown moving picture business give way to massive corporate conglomerates. Ragtime presents the transitory period between two distinct eras of American history where progress becomes both accelerated and resisted. Father is able to justify his place in society by the end of the book by adopting a new persona as an (illegal?) arms dealer at the onset of World War 1, aided by Mother’s Younger Brother’s inventions. In all likelihood his business would have weathered on fine and made him some money, but he was only able to stay relevant by keeping up with the times.
My favorite part of this blog is your connection between Father's gifts from the arctic and the outdatedness. I agree with idea that Father is this symbolic character of a traditional conservative. I always wonder what would happen if Mother's Younger Brother's words had been able to reach him in the last couple chapters. This is in part due to MYB's inability to articulate his thoughts as well as say Emma Goldman, but Father completely ignores these valid criticisms. It's also interesting seeing Father in the last chapter, as Doctorow portrays Father as someone fading from existence. I feel like his connection with Mother was the only thing keeping him in the story, and once this was severed, he lost his relevance.
ReplyDeleteI agree that father's actual involvement in the story really starts to fade away after he comes back from the expedition, and even while he's there he still isn't really doing anything. It's also interesting how coalhouse's involvement ends up pushing him to start taking a more active role, which seems to do for the rest of the family as well, and how it also makes him even more alienated from his family. He's not really that different from Younger Brother in the way that coalhouse's involvement causes them to both start actually acting on some of their beliefs, whether it's trying to uphold the old system of justice or become a revolutionary, and how it causes both of them to start having a more historical role.
ReplyDeleteI feel like many of the plots of Ragtime can be seen as comments on the transition into the 20th century, but the element's of Father's narrative make it seem the most obvious example of this. His attitudes toward baseball seems to me one of the biggest examples of that transition because the turn of the century is when baseball entered the "dead-ball era" which is seen as the beginning of modern baseball by many.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in your take about Father finally "getting with the times" when he parlays MYB's invented future-weapons into profiteering during the years when the US was still "neutral" (but not really) in World War I. This makes sense--there is perhaps no more quintessential 20th-century archetype than the international arms dealer, a cynic might say. But at the same time, I always read Father's unfortunate ending as evidence that he simply cannot be allowed to survive into the modern era (which many cultural historians mark as beginning with WWI). In his own family, he has been displaced by an immigrant, and there's this sense throughout the novel of the world moving on without him. But you're right that he does (ironically, thanks to MYB) get a brief "second act" where he seems poised to be at the cusp of the modern era, which is partly defined by its ever more sophisticated technologies of murder.
ReplyDeleteRagtime overall displays the changing times and ideals of the turn of the 20th century America. You blog does a great job at highlighting Fathers Role in this story. As a member of the nameless family, he is very much interreacting with this new world he sees himself in, especially after his long journey to the artic. How each of the nameless family interacts with the times shows a different reaction of society at the time and you highlights Fathers very well, great post!
ReplyDeleteIt seems painfully obvious to compare Tateh and Father (they even marry the same woman!) but I hadn't really thought of it till I read your post. I can definately see Father being stuck in the past. While others do struggle with the change occuring around them, they seem to "recover" and find their footing. Father on the other hand seems to remain lost, and apprehensive towards change, which can be represented by his opinions on Coalhouse. On the other hand, Tateh rises from poverty, and pulls of the quintessential American Dream for immigrants. One exception for Father's not-getting-on-with-the-times-ness could be his negotiations with the police. But since he's working with a pre-established body that predates the changes of the period, maybe he feels more comfortable.
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