The Ending of Ragtime
Last week, we discussed the ending of Ragtime, and
the general consensus was that it was a happy ending. Though it does seem to
end happily for the newly-formed family, the endings for some of the other
characters that we didn’t have time to discuss in detail, don’t necessarily
achieve the happily-ever-after ending that Mother, Tateh, and their children
get. It also seems that many of the characters that don’t end up very well are
also the characters that wield the most power/privilege amongst the characters
in the book.
One
character we didn’t discuss in much detail at the end of the book was Morgan.
The last scene of Morgan is him in Egypt, not being able to experience the
revelation he was searching for throughout the book. Though Morgan is
unbelievably wealthy, he doesn’t seem to be nearly as content with his life as
the newly-formed family does by the end of the book. Instead, he seems to have
found nothing of purpose by the end of his quest to find some kind of deeper
meaning in his life.
This theme
of searching for meaning in life (and failing to do so) is seen in other
characters’ endings as well. Father and Mother’s Younger Brother try to find
purpose in their lives—Father through this quest to the North Pole, and
Mother’s Younger Brother in his development as a revolutionary. However, both
of them don’t truly achieve much in the end. Father dies on the Lusitania,
and Mother’s Younger Brother dies in Mexico. It may have been different if they
had made some kind of lasting impact (though Mother’s Younger Brother left
behind the weapons he created, it wasn’t really the goal he was trying to
achieve), both Father and Mother’s Younger Brother seem to have failed in their
attempts to find purpose or leave behind a mark on society. Similarly, Evelyn
Nesbitt isn’t able to leave behind much of an impact either. She is merely
described to have been forgotten by the end of the time period.
I don't think it's accurate to say Ragtime has a "happy" or "sad" ending as a whole. Unlike pure-fiction novels, there isn't a main character, nor a group of main characters. Ragtime contains the plots of multiple characters -- Tateh and Mother, Evelyn Nesbit, Coalhouse, etc -- and how these plotlines interact. Some of these characters end up with happy endings, like Tateh, while others' endings aren't as happy, like Father's.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the reason I considered it a happy ending was because the characters I really liked were happy at the end of the novel. Sure J.P. Morgan isn't happy but I didn't really like him or care about him. I didn't like Father either. I think Peter is right in saying that it's not accurate to say Ragtime has a happy or sad ending, though I believe that's because this novel is supposed to be more like history instead of a story, and I've never really finished reading a history textbook and though wow that's a happy ending.
ReplyDeleteI wrote a whole post on this topic (check it out!), but for me, it's not so much that Doctorow decisively provides "a happy ending" altogether, but just that the novel ends with a surprisingly happy little tableau of a reconstituted American family, with our favorite character poised to take movie-making into socially progressive and utopian directions. GIven Doctorow's relentless irony, this is sort of surprising. But this tableau sits right alongside the more neutral line about the "era of Ragtime running out," like the player-piano roll has run its course, with no deeper meaning or "conclusion" to the "age." And this tableau does exist amid a lot of futility, death, and absurdity among most of the other characters and their fate.
ReplyDeleteI'd agree with this take, and further, it's very important from a postmodern perspective that the book doesn't have an exclusively happy or sad ending. A postmodernist might say, who can tell us whether an era ended happily or sadly? The narrative of direction of change ("the world is getting better" or "The world is getting worse") is a fundamental metanarrative that we live within. Like all metanarratives, it's not a universal truth. The Ragtime era wasn't objectively good or bad on the whole.
DeleteIf Doctorow focused on one emotionally monotone arc in his story, it would create this very modernist sense of a single unified story. In reality, no era ends happily for everyone or sadly for everyone. Instead, some people profit and others suffer from any change, and Doctorow does a fantastic job of portraying that mixed bag in the end of Ragtime.
To a certain extent, a lot of this connects to the idea of previous success and the journeys that all of the characters take throughout the book. For characters like Morgan, and Father, they had all they could possibly need from the very beginning of the book. With money, family, and success, their problems are more existential in nature, and they just aren't able to solve them throughout the book. It's pretty similar to the old "poor people just don't understand the struggles that the wealthy have" mindset. What direction can a person on top of everything go, other than down? Whereas for characters like Mother and Tateh, we see them struggle for agency throughout the book, and as they gain it, their lives become better. Even Coalhouse, whose story ultimately ends in his death, seems to die content of what he's done with his life and how far he's come. We like endings that signify changes for the better, and we tend to sympathize much more with people going through some struggle more than having the problem of being too successful.
ReplyDeleteDoctorow has some pretty harsh criticisms of J.P. Morgan throughout the novel, but I could interpret Morgan's ending as either a further criticism of capitalism, or a further critique of Morgan himself. On the one hand, it shows that even though Morgan has all the money in the world, he's still not content with his life and is always looking for something more fulfilling. On the other hand, you could read it as Doctorow further making fun of Morgan as a character in American history who became rich and successful and therefore saw himself as above everyone else, with little effort of his own.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting that you bring up Morgan, because to me it feels like his ending is the strangest. A man who we originally meet as very composed winds up sitting in the middle of the night inside a pyramid, praying for a supernatural sign. I think with Morgan's story line, Doctorow is showing that even those who seem to be the happiest and the most successful have qualms. Morgan develops a dissatisfied feeling throughout the book, which comes to a head when he goes to Egypt. By portraying Morgan in this state of weakness and disillusionment, Doctorow is bringing him down from the God-like pedestal Morgan had been seen on throughout the novel.
ReplyDeleteI feel there is something with the male figures in this book. Morgan, Younger Brother and Father all have very similar endings about nearly the same thing. We are left with both Father and Younger brother dying and Morgan in the tombstones. I feel like Doctorow could be making a point about how many males feel the need to prove themselves with these endings for the characters because each one kinda went through a self discovery arc but in the end had a somewhat tragic ending (Can't really speak for females as I am a male).
ReplyDelete