Even though we’ve finished Ragtime and moved on to Mumbo Jumbo, I feel that we didn’t quite
finish learning about everyone in the book. In fact, spoilers, most of our main
cast just dies at the end and I still feel that some of them felt as alien as
ever. We do get to learn more about Coalhouse and Tateh and Younger Brother and
Mother, but did we really get to know them
better? I feel as if Doctorow had a specific goal in mind when having certain characters
that we feel like we know everything about and with characters we know next to
nothing about. For the most part, the ones we tend to know about are the
historical figures, and the ones we know near nothing about are the characters
of the family and Coalhouse. A bit like history in a way. We think we know a person whose
been put into a history book because the information is written down and widely
accepted, but we really don't, we just know about everything records say about them. Who’s to say that Doctorow’s Evelyn Nesbit is falsified?
Maybe she did fade out of the public eye to visit poorer districts and become
an anonymous donor to Emma Goldman’s efforts. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t,
but regardless, we feel as if we know her because apparently her life is
documented in the history books. However, we also know that most of the
information we have on her is slanted because of the media and her public image
at the time, so it’s almost if by default we don’t know her at all, we just know about her.
Building on this is the fact that the
one person we think should have been put into the history books, Coalhouse
Walker, isn’t in any recorded events. He is oddly lacking when it comes to
information on him, and it stands out to us significantly more than the
characters who Doctorow seems to know intimately. Despite this, he also feels
the most like a realistic figure out of the cast. We sympathize with him often and seem to find
more ways to understand him even though he is the character most veiled in mystery. All of the historical figures seem so removed from
reality in their own way (ie. Ford is like a machine, Morgan feels transcended above
the common folk, etc.). In reality, we really do learn the least about the
family and Coalhouse, but we get to know them better than anyone else. In contrast, we learn the
most about the historical figures and what their lives could have been like,
but we know them the least. They still feel like some sort of legend instead of
human beings, and it raises the question once again: Is there a difference
between history and fiction?
