Ragtime: An Ironic Display of the Failure of the American Dream
In Ragtime, we see different iterations of the artificial “American Dream” illustrated through different characters. For some, the American Dream is a reality: the nuclear family with a hard-working father and housewife mother, Evelyn Nesbit, the woman born poor who found fame and fortune, and the capitalist tycoons Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan building their empires and rolling in their riches. Other characters represent a critique of the American Dream: Tateh, the poor socialist, Emma Goldman, the revolutionary anarchist, and Coalhouse Walker, the respectable man turned revolutionary terrorist all represent the artificial nature of the American Dream and the pushback against it as an ideology.
Everything is treated with a good deal of irony in Ragtime, and the characters living the "American Dream” are no exception. The most obvious examples are Henry Ford, who is depicted as an emotionless machine focused on nothing but profit and efficiency, allotting only “sixty seconds on his pocket watch for a display of sentiment” after achieving his goals and J.P. Morgan, who is depicted as a delusional hyper-capitalist who thinks he is the reincarnation of an ancient Pharaoh (Doctorow 136). These two are clear representations of the evil of capitalism, and how the people who benefit from it become monstrously selfish. The family and Evelyn Nesbit, on the other hand, act as examples of how capitalism hurts everyone, even people who benefit from it. The family is very well off, with the father coming from a wealthy family, and having “attended Groton and then Harvard,” and are clear examples of the middle class American Dream (Doctorow 215). Despite this, Mother and Father’s relationship seems completely loveless, Mother’s Younger Brother feels alienated by his family and trapped among people completely different from him, and the Little Boy lives completely inside his own head, with no significant connection to any of his family members. The family is an example of how the “American Dream” seems good from the outside, but is ultimately artificial, leaving everyone more divided in the end. Evelyn Nesbit is the clearest example of the failure of capitalism. Despite having the perfect American story of rags to riches, from a nobody to a national celebrity, she is famous for all the wrong reasons, and suffers due to her fame. Evelyn is rich only because of her husband, who ended up being an abusive murderer, and the only thing she has gained from her newfound fame is constant speculation on her private life and harsh scrutiny from news outlets daily. All of these characters represent different versions of the failure of capitalism: the greed that feeds into it, its artificial perfection, and the backlash that comes from the “Amercian Dream.”
Other characters in Ragtime reflect the other side of capitalism: those who don’t benefit from it and those who critique it. The clearest example of a critic of capitalism is Emma Goldman, the voice of reason throughout the novel. Emma Goldman comes in every few chapters to remind the reader of the effects of capitalism, and how it connects back to everything. She interacts with a lot of the characters who benefit from capitalism, talking sense into Mothers Younger Brother and Evelyn Nesbit about how they are victims of capitalism as much as anyone else. She tells Evelyn that she is a “creature of capitalism” and that her beauty is “false and old and useless” (Doctorow 57). Tateh is another character who begins as a critic of capitalism, but ends up representing the American Dream just the same. Even though he started out as a staunch socialist, once Tateh’s picture book sells enough copies, he gives up all of his ideals and effectively sells out, choosing a life of comfort and luxury over his old life in the slums. While this might seem like a success story at first, Doctorow uses Tateh as a representation of someone losing his values and falling into the trap of capitalism, throwing away everything he’s believed in and everyone he’s fought for once he gets a promising new opportunity. Coalhouse Walker represents the failure of the free market aspect of capitalism that tells us that if we work hard enough, we can win too. Coalhouse Walker was a successful musician, he was educated, well-spoken, and well dressed. Coalhouse Walker began as a figure who represented the success of capitalism; a man who, against all odds and despite racial oppression, climbed his way to the top. All of this success was represented in his pride and joy, his Model T. Despite all of this, though, Coalhouse Walker still suffers from the unjust nature of capitalism. He has effectively reached the "American Dream,” engaged with a child and a respectable job, but all of this is thrown away due to an encounter with some racist firefighters. When these firefighters vandalize his car, they are vandalizing the one item that most represents his success and his pride. This sends Coalhouse Walker into a revenge-fueled rampage, burning down buildings and creating his own revolutionary group. These characters represent the critiques of capitalism: the counter-movement that exists to fight against it, those who sell out their ideals and values in exchange for money, and those who, despite working just as hard as everyone else, can never truly benefit from capitalism because it is a fundamentally unfair system.
