Final thoughts on "Ragtime"

    Before moving onto Mumbo Jumbo, I wanted to give my final thoughts to Ragtime as a way to properly conclude our discussion on the book. So after reading Ragtime, what did I think of it? Probably, the best way to describe my reaction was how I did not predict such a conclusion. Rarely, have I seen an author show such little emotion when killing off the main fictional characters in such violent deaths. To top it all off, Harry K. Thaw is the last person to be described in the book, in all things, the Armistice Day Parade.
    After reading some other blog posts and listening to the discussions in class, I agree with other people in how cynical and ironic Doctorow ends the story. In Mr. Mitchell’s blog post “A Happy Ending?”, I remember him saying the following quote: “history does not produce tidy narratives with clear morals or meanings”. We create history in order to record our past accomplishments and failures. This history is used to look back and try to learn something about ourselves from it. However, not every single event can be recorded and, as I have already discussed in my previous blog post, we fill in the holes with our own theories and fictional thoughts. At the same time, history is not some fairy tale that we can take too kindly, for there is always war, massacres, and tragedies in every generation’s history. People with the insanity of those like Harry K. Thaw have played significant roles in history, everyone from dictators to revolutionaries. Whether we like them or not, they will continue to exist in the future forever.

If I had to describe the biggest thing I learned from Ragtime, it’s how an author of historical fiction can practically do whatever they want with real historical figures. As we’ve probably talked about over and over again, Doctorow has created these ridiculous and ludicrous back stories behind J.P. Morgan, Ford, and Houdini. Yet, nobody can prove Doctorow wrong because there is no solid evidence to do so. The author has the power to create his own world with these real events and historical figures whether they be true or not.

After reading the first day’s reading of Mumbo Jumbo, I can see, as Mr. Mitchell has already said before, how different Reed’s take is as a historical fiction author. I don’t want to say much about Mumbo Jumbo yet, as I have not read too deeply into it. However, Ragtime has certainly opened my eyes in how I view historical fiction novels, and hopefully I’ll learn something even bigger in our next book.