The Little Boy and the title

For the most part, the narrative position that Doctorow takes in Ragtime is a detached third person narrator, however, as I have discussed in previously posts, he sometimes slips into the perspective of one of his characters. The most significant of these characters is the little boy. Doctorow repeatedly comes back to the young child's point of view, using him to view much of the family dynamics of the New Rochelle family. But why? Why is the point of view of a child what Doctorow wants for this story?

Through Doctorow's manipulation of historical figures, Doctorow tries to change the idea of history from static to dynamic, from set in stone to theoretical, essentially from fact to fiction. Thus, he needs a narrator who is symbolic of the changing times and eager and able to perceive the changes occurring around him. A small child is perfect for this symbol because little kids grow rapidly and have visible changes in appearance over relatively short periods of time. There is a scene about him looking in the mirror and eventually he can't decide which is his real self and which is the reflection. THIS IS SO RAGTIME, both history and story are so close to reality that the reader struggles to mark fact from fiction.

The boy is also symbolic of fiction because he is young, playful, and, as all young children do, trying to create a world that he understands. History, in contrast, is more cold. One author I was reading discussed the title of the book in relation to the events in the book in a piece of literary criticism about the novel. There are two reasons for the title. First, the novel is about the ragtime era but second and more subtly, the genre of music called ragtime is comparable to the genre of writing that goes on in the book. History is the thumping, straight bass line holding the piece together while fiction is the treble/melody line with syncopated rhythms and intricate chords, sometimes harmoniously adding to the bass while at others, when the treble gets too far from the bass, clashing and eventually erupting into unorganized cacophony. Isn't that exactly like Ragtime? I think this is a wonderful comparison but there is more I need to add. (I am kind of digressing so new paragraph.)

Ragtime, the genre of music, is also a comment on the race relations of the time. Coon songs are basically happy, simple caricatures by white people for white people of older African-American music. Ragtime takes back this style of music and modernizes it, re-adding what made it interesting in the first place, the syncopation and chordal melodies. Coon songs are representative of the New Rochelle family's point of view and the lines that open the book about how there were no Negroes or immigrants: life is happy and simple. Then Colehouse Walker enters and brings with him a story, he is the complication and the rhythm. The New Rochelle family is bass, thumping calmly and steadily along and Colehouse and Sarah are the melody, sometime harmonizes and getting along, other times clashing and fighting. Colehouse embellishes the normally regular routine of the New Rochelle family.

This affect is also seen when Colehouse and the firemen meet. There interaction starts with the white firemen just chilling, minding to their daily routine of not really doing much. Enter Colehouse. Now things change. Colehouse changes encourages them to action and thus starts the story (or melody, to link this back to the metaphor). Thus another example of the ragtime metaphor in the novel.

Conclusion: The little boy is really significant and interesting. The metaphorical ragtime in Ragtime is so insanely cool and adds to reading the novel (at least for us music lovers).