We talked about this a little in class today in the context of Coalhouse, but there are certain characters in Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow into which we know little about them and we do not get to go into their minds. Given that Doctorow establishes at the beginning of the novel and throughout the novel that he is a narrator and author that can do as he pleases (for example having Houdini show up right when the little boy thinks about him), it seems strange that we don't get to know what's going on inside the heads of characters like Coalhouse and Mother's Younger Brother, and it is also strange that Doctorow simply doesn't know much about characters like Coalhouse and Sarah.
This stands in sharp contrast with the chapters involving Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan. Doctorow devotes whole chapters to how each of those individuals' minds work, and then tells us information about them and the Pyramid that somehow only he knows. Normally, we know more about the minds of characters who are central to the story than about the minds of ancillary characters, and as far as we know Coalhouse and Younger Brother seem much more central to the main story line than Ford or Morgan. In part because we see more of them, characters such as Coalhouse, Younger Brother, and his family should be and probably are the more complex characters we should be the most emotionally invested in. We should be able to interact with these characters in some way. Ford and especially Morgan seem almost purposely put into the story by Doctorow in order to provide an unrelatable character we simply aren't going to empathize with a whole lot. Morgan is literally contemplating with himself the side effects of having surpassed all of humanity, and Morgan and Ford look for reasons why they are so much better than the rest of us. Doctorow has written his work in such a way that these characters that should incite less empathy are the characters of whose minds we know more about than the characters from the main story line.
Why has Doctorow done this? I think it is a way for Doctorow to have us as the readers to have greater interaction and connection with the main characters of Ragtime. For many literary characters, we become attached to them in some way when we learn about what they think, and we have feelings for them based on who the author says they are. For historical characters (especially famous and largely unrelatable ones) such as Ford and Morgan, Doctorow has to factor in (to a certain extent) the fact that his audience already has some sort of feelings for these historical figures. As a result he tells us in large part what to think of them by showing their thought processes to us. This is in order to have some more clarity in the historical context in which he situates the main story of Ragtime. With characters such as Coalhouse and Younger Brother, Doctorow has given us plenty of third-person material to work with to get an idea for how these characters felt, and that allows us to fill in the book with those ideas of ours (like when we envisioned how Coalhouse must have felt when his car got trashed, or when Younger Brother found out about it and thought about how Coalhouse must have felt). This essentially causes us to empathize with these characters by taking their place for certain scenes, and this causes us to create our own, more personal connections with these characters.
Let me know how much I missed the mark by in your comments below!
This stands in sharp contrast with the chapters involving Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan. Doctorow devotes whole chapters to how each of those individuals' minds work, and then tells us information about them and the Pyramid that somehow only he knows. Normally, we know more about the minds of characters who are central to the story than about the minds of ancillary characters, and as far as we know Coalhouse and Younger Brother seem much more central to the main story line than Ford or Morgan. In part because we see more of them, characters such as Coalhouse, Younger Brother, and his family should be and probably are the more complex characters we should be the most emotionally invested in. We should be able to interact with these characters in some way. Ford and especially Morgan seem almost purposely put into the story by Doctorow in order to provide an unrelatable character we simply aren't going to empathize with a whole lot. Morgan is literally contemplating with himself the side effects of having surpassed all of humanity, and Morgan and Ford look for reasons why they are so much better than the rest of us. Doctorow has written his work in such a way that these characters that should incite less empathy are the characters of whose minds we know more about than the characters from the main story line.
Why has Doctorow done this? I think it is a way for Doctorow to have us as the readers to have greater interaction and connection with the main characters of Ragtime. For many literary characters, we become attached to them in some way when we learn about what they think, and we have feelings for them based on who the author says they are. For historical characters (especially famous and largely unrelatable ones) such as Ford and Morgan, Doctorow has to factor in (to a certain extent) the fact that his audience already has some sort of feelings for these historical figures. As a result he tells us in large part what to think of them by showing their thought processes to us. This is in order to have some more clarity in the historical context in which he situates the main story of Ragtime. With characters such as Coalhouse and Younger Brother, Doctorow has given us plenty of third-person material to work with to get an idea for how these characters felt, and that allows us to fill in the book with those ideas of ours (like when we envisioned how Coalhouse must have felt when his car got trashed, or when Younger Brother found out about it and thought about how Coalhouse must have felt). This essentially causes us to empathize with these characters by taking their place for certain scenes, and this causes us to create our own, more personal connections with these characters.
Let me know how much I missed the mark by in your comments below!
No, I don't think you missed the mark at all! This is a rather unique way of looking at why Doctorow explains so much more about the less central characters of the story, and does explain a lot. But I wonder then, if we create our own connections with the characters by filling in the gaps, does everyone has a different Coalhouse Walker in mind?
ReplyDeleteAlso: your phrase "side effects of having passed all of humanity," is a very apt way of putting it. Nice.
I think that this is a good point. Doctorow encourages us to sympathize with Coalhouse through the descriptions of other people's feelings and thoughts about him. It's interesting that Doctorow chooses to give the "historical" characters (I'm thinking of Morgan) more thorough descriptions of their thoughts, while with the other characters we are reliant on descriptions of their actions and other people's reactions. Doctorow seems to be treating the historical characters as fictional and the fictional characters as historical.
ReplyDeleteIn real life we don't get to go into other people's minds, so I think that you are correct in saying that Doctorow's lack of detail on certain characters make them seem more real to us. For example, a lot of Coalhouse's story we learn through the point of view of the family so the limited information makes sense. For characters that are more used as canvases for irony Doctorow gives us lots of details, making them appear larger than life instead of as in real life.
ReplyDeleteI feel as if Doctorow almost had a specific goal in mind when having characters that we feel like we know everything about and with characters we know next to nothing about. The ones we and Doctorow tend to know about are the historical ones, and the ones we know near nothing about are the characters of the family and Coalhouse. It's as if we as readers are supposed to develop an individual feeling for each of these characters as if we were just another person observing them in the news for instance.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I find myself wondering why Morgan and especially Ford got so much time in the spotlight, when their contributions to the book are rather minuscule in the end. Morgan sends a phone call? Other than the fact that it is Morgan's house that is taken I don't think there is any other relation (I might have forgotten one), while both Younger Brother and especially Coalhouse Walker have very big roles in the ending of the story. Thanks, your article made me wonder why this was and you did a very good job of supporting your points.
ReplyDelete