Ragtime by EL Doctorow Book Talk

Description: Ragtime is an historical fiction novel based at the turn of the 20^th Century and features many key historical figures of the time: Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini and Evelyn Nesbit to name a few. Each of these characters are tangential to the actual story, however, which features a family of characters who are known simply as Father, Mother, Mother’s Younger Brother and Little Boy. This family becomes embroiled in the circumstances surrounding an African-American Pianist named Coalhouse Walker Jr. whose automobile is destroyed and desecrated by a private fire-fighting company in New Rochelle, New York. Coalhouse demands justice for this act of racist violence and humiliation and is rejected by civil means of retribution and thus takes justice into his own hands, demanding the return and restoration of his car as well as the death of the fire chief responsible.

Rationale: I put forward this book as an ideal book for the classroom because it deals with an issue that is still very much a part of our society and still needs to be addressed. Furthermore, it provides a rare glimpse of racism occurring outside of the American South, helping students to understand that racism is not just a Southern issue. I also like the fact that it takes place in a period of American history that is often under-represented in our education system; introducing things like the Harry K. Thaw murder trial (also known as “The Trial of the Century”) and the blossoming of the movie industry. I would recommend this novel be taught in an 11-12^th grade classroom as it contains mature material that would be better handled by an older audience.

Teaching Ideas:

·         I think this book would work excellently in a dual-disciplined Social Studies/English classroom as a chance to work with the much ignored early part of the 20^th Century. It could further be used as a text to introduce the issue of racism in the U.S.

·         Teachers could also use this text to draw connections between interpretations of the same story in different media forms as Ragtime is also a movie (made in 1981) and a Broadway musical.

·         Educators could also approach Ragtime from a stylistic angle, accentuating Doctorow’s use of large block paragraphs and no separation of dialogue (including no use of quotation marks).

Obstacles: Parents and administrators would most likely object to the explicit sexual material that appears in the first fifty or so pages of the text. Specifically, these are related to the sexual abuse of Evelyn Nesbit (pictured above) by her husband Harry Kendall Thaw, and her lover, the famous architect and victim of murder, Stanford White. There is one scene related to Mother’s Younger Brother that deals with masturbation and is again linked to Evelyn Nesbit. All of these instances, however, are brief and mentioned primarily as a statement of historic fact (in the case of Evelyn’s sexual abuse) or character building/humor (in the case of MYB). Students’ primary concerns would likely stem from the daunting paragraph lengths.