Happily Ever After...?

Ah, the ending of a good novel! Reading Ragtime has been one hell of a metafictional ride, so I can only imagine what we have in store for Mumbo Jumbo. 

Before we collectively move on to Ishmael Reed, however, I’d like to use this blog post to discuss the ending of Ragtime. In my opinion, the last few pages of the book were, in a word, fittingly unsatisfying. While many people in class have argued that the ending of the book (especially Tateh’s arc) points to a brighter, more equal future, I’d argue that the narrative of Ragtime is more effective with an empty ending. There’s a sense of strange, looping melancholy to the conclusion of each character’s arc -- I’m not left hoping for a “bright future” so much as lingering on the greatness of the past, which is slowly fading into obscurity. 

Younger Brother, after his sudden and incredible stint as a Mexican revolutionary (which, considering his past lethargy, is likely a “good thing” for his character), is now dead. Father, having largely separated from Mother, has achieved his social ambitions (“Father had...become a familiar of high-ranking officers”, pg. 317), but is said to be deeply unhappy. He dies on the Lusitania, the very boat that kick-starts the American war involvement that he spent his last years working tirelessly for. 

Mother, on the other hand, marries Tateh, and their union is said to be “joyful though without issue” (pg. 319). While she’s happy and married to the man she loves, she arguably also loses some of the sense of character growth and independence that the social change of the past era had fostered in her. In the same vein, new husband, Tateh, edges ever further away from his initial revolutionary tendencies. His greatest achievements are now “The Little Rascals” films, which, in comparison to the firebrand ways of his past, seem a rather pale and diluted form of idealism. (While I personally think that media representation is the most important front on battling all types of intolerance and xenophobia, we have to see Tateh’s situation the way Doctorow, a 1970s author, sees it. In my opinion, Doctorow includes a hint of smirking disdain at Mother and Tateh’s much-too-idyllic ending -- he makes a fortune creating processed and packaged children’s films in California, and their happiness is almost sickly-sweet. Small personal achievements when compared to the integrity of Emma Goldman’s fiery strength.) 

The last few sentences are perhaps most melancholy of all -- “the anarchist Emma Goldman had been deported. The beautiful and passionate Evelyn Nesbit had lost her looks and fallen into obscurity. And Harry K. Thaw, having obtained his release from the insane asylum, marched annually at Newport in the Armistice Day parade”. The vigor and life of the past era, the one we have spent this entire novel in, has faded away; the narratives we experienced are no longer relevant. We’re now transitioning into the 1920s, which may be seen as a relatively shallow and “sparkly” decade, especially in comparison to the candid way Doctorow writes the Progressive era. Mother and Tateh have regressed to upper-middle-class suburbia, while all the old figures (the revolutionary Emma Goldman and Younger Brother, the old-school Father and J.P. Morgan, the striking largeness of Evelyn Nesbit and Harry Houdini) have either died off or faded away. Perfectly pretty futures for a perfectly pretty era. We’re left with the dying notes of Ragtime, “as if history were no more than a tune on a player piano” (pg. 319).