Daniel's Character's Portrayal

In "The Book Of Daniel" there is one narrator and that is Daniel Lewin (Issacson). Although his story stretches from his childhood till he has a family of his own it is the story through his eyes and his alone. The yound Daniel becomes a troubled abusive man later in life. While reading the visions of Daniel when he was young it is easier to forget about what he has become; but in reading what shaped him into the man he is today does answer a majority of the questions that arise while reading some of his acts that he perpetrates against his wife and son.
These are a majority of the quotes of Daniel's self admitted abusive acts.

“She get gets all tight and vulnerable and our love making degrades her.” (Doctorow 7).

“All her instinctive unprincipled beliefs rise to the surface and her knees lock together. She becomes a sex martyr. I think that’s why I married her. (Doctorow 7).

When we were still talking, the father tried to bring himself to ask me about the bruises his wife saw on his daughter’s upper legs; he mumbled and cleared his throat, but I pretended not to understand, and he gave it up. I think they call her during the day. (Doctorow 57).

“”This is a kind of sick kidding around, Daniel. It frightens me. You have no right to freak out driving a car with your own baby in it.” Daniel pressed down further on the accelerator.” (Doctorow 58).

Daniel was pleased with this formulation. She wouldn’t have been capable of it six months before. He thought of complimenting her. Instead he leaned forward and turned of the windshield wipers. (Doctorow 59).

“Don’t hurt me. Just don’t hurt me, Daniel.” (Doctorow 60).

“Do you want to know the effect of three concentric circles of heating element glowing orange in a black night of rain upon the tender white girlflesh of my wife’s ass?” (Doctorow 60).

A self-conscious period of serious talks showed signs of coming to an end. In these talks she looked for rationale to forgive me and I was able to help her find one. We tried to share mutual responsibility for my actions. We considered me as our mutual problem. I was shameless. (Doctorow 99).

We were walking in the park. I tossed my son higher and higher, and now he laughed no longer but cried out. Still I did not stop and I threw him higher and caught him closer to the ground. Then Phyllis was begging me to stop. The baby now shut his mouth, concentrating on his fear, his small face, my Isaacson face, locked in absolute dumb dread of the breath-taking flight into the sky and the even more terrifying fall toward the earth. I can’t bear to think about this murderous felling. Phyllis was pulling at my arm and trying to keep me from throwing my son high in the air and daring us all with the failure of missing him on the way down. I can’t remember my thoughts. I think his weight, the heft of his little body, freaked me. I enjoyed the moment it left my hands and hated the moment it returned, with a shock to all the muscles in my arms. I enjoyed the fear in his mother. (Doctorow 131).

It is in these acts Daniel becomes villianous. But why? Does his portrayal of himself (or in actuallity, Doctorow's) make him out to be a bad guy or just serve to show the damage done? His parents were taken from him by the government and eventually executed for thier beliefs. He lived in an orphanage and foster homes with his younger sister. He then grew to be the man in these abusive acts or that is at least what we're told.

Questions and Responses From Class Disscussion Board on Ragtime

Question 1). While it doesn't seem that Sarah's death was the direct result of community racism, it would be hard to argue that her death had nothing to do with race or racism. Looking closely at ch. 25, talk about some of the ways in which ideas about race and/or racist social structures contribute to Sarah's death.

Response 1). The issue of why she is there in the first place also comes from an aggravated act of racism. She went down to see James Sherman and speak on behalf of Coalhouse Walker and the altercation between him and the Emerald Island Fire House. This selection of the story had been started by blatant racism and would also end with it. As you said, and which struck me as unreal,” Her arm was extended and her black hand reached toward him. He shrank from the contact. Perhaps in the dark windy evening of impending storm it seemed to Sherman's guards that Sarah's black hand was a weapon." It reminds me of when you see the news and it is a story about a black man shot by a white police officer because the officer thought the black man was carrying a gun. The whole chapter could be quoted and explained as racist events. Back to the topic, why did he shrink from the contact? Did he think or perceive that she had a weapon? Was it just because she was black? Both maybe? I tend to lean towards that she was black and caught him off-guard. Even with a description of a dark storm ready evening doesn't make me believe that she could be thought of as having a weapon.

Question 2). In the first paragraph of ch. 23 (p. 145), the narrator tells us that Coalhouse Walker, Jr., knew that many white people were resentful of his refusal to act inferior to them: "He had created himself in the teeth of such feelings." What could this mean? Look closely at the language, and write a bit about Doctorow's word choices in the sentence I've quoted.

Response 2). When referring to the quoted text it is also good to look at the line prior. "He was not unaware that in his dress and in as the owner of a car he was a provocation to many white people. He had created himself in the teeth of suck feelings." It is these two sentences Doctorow suggests that his image (style of dress and his car) were to create such a provocation in the white America surrounding him. This isn't to say provocation of violence, but to walk the line between violence, glares and comments under their breathes. He wanted to noticed and seen by white America and create a reaction of some sort; not the reaction that displayed by the Fire House. "...and as he drove past they would fall silent and stare at him." This reaction made him feel of importance and good. It would also be his undoing. I am not saying that he deserved anything that happened to him, well baring the option of getting married and living out the rest of his life with Sarah and his child but that didn't happen. I am saying that in the writing it is said "HE had CREATED HIMSELF in the TEETH of SUCH FEELINGS" It was his choice and action to do such. Whether he did as if to say "look at what a black man can do" or to make less well-off whites feel inferior and himself feel better; it does not make what the Emerald Isle Fire House did to him right in anyway. But there is an almost an understood defiance in him as I read and interpreted it. I use defiance in terms with the time period takes place. Although in New York (Northern State) and well after the Civil War there still was racism in almost every part of the country. The word "teeth" even creates a hostile sense or a feeling of anger.

Houdini!

Harry Houdini was the world's most famous magician. He was an idol to many of the poor and common folk. He spent his entire life to the trade of magic and always tried to out due himself with a more amazing stunt than his last. The young boy in Ragtime tells us about this Harry Houdini and all the things he has done. Then Harry Houdini ends up at the family's home and is woven from that point on into the fabric of the story. Once again Doctorow uses these real people in his tale of early 1900s New York and surrounding areas. At one point Houdini is performing one of his popular escapes at a prison in which Thaw is being held at during his trial. Although there is no record of Houdini being at the prison at the same time Harry Thaw is there it does allow the reader to believe that maybe, just maybe, it could have happened. Doctorow also tells the unfortunate but interesting past time of Houdini after his beloved Mother's death. He set out along with a few others in rebuking spiritualists and "medium." Doctorow's spin on the story is very creative, he suggests that Houdini was looking for someone that could actually contact his Mother on the other side. The usage of Houdini allows the boy/narrator to unfold more events from his Point of View and an omniscient Point of View after he meets Harry Houdini.

Real People In Fiction

E.L. Doctorow use of real characters give his stories and foot hold in time and place. It makes it more believable tot he reader to identify the period of time in which the action takes place. In Ragtime these "characters" are given fictitious lines and actions but not all that transpires is false. If it were then the story would lack a certain authority that Doctorow creates with such character usage. In one thread of the storyline the characters(As pictured from left to right) Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, and Harry Thaw are used. These characters were not only real but really famous, infamous even. Harry Thaw had murdered Stanford White. His trial would be proclaimed, "The Trial of The Century," but the 20th Century had just begun. The story really begins with Evelyn Nesbit who was the "It Girl" of the early 1900s. She was an actress, model, and Gibson Girl. She was barely 16 years old when she had first met Stanford White. Stanford White was an architect and very wealthy. There was an affair between them in which it was said that White drugged the young Nesbit and did horrible sexual and abusive acts to her. Later she retold these tales to her new lover and soon-to-be husband Harry K. Thaw. Thaw was a millionaire for Pittsburgh and was know to have a wild temper. After hearing these stories from Evelyn he shot Stanford White on top of Madison Square Garden's rooftop restaurant. He would later be tried; then re-tried and found guilty by reason of insanity. Then even after an escape from an instituion of the insane he was found sane and released. Doctorow uses this true story not only because of its noterity in the time period but because it actually happened thereby linking the other characters and stories in Ragtime to a real pinpoint time period in AMerica history.

Writing style.

My reading experience is what I like to call above average. I at one point tried to read THE 100 Best Books of all time. I made it to around 50 and realized that most of them were on a syllabus somewhere during the course of my student life. This brought me to the idea, what makes these books so special. Is it who they were written by or when they were published? I'd be willing to bet 100 out of 100 of these books are a fictional character in a fictional place (well maybe not the place but at least the character). Then I started to read "Ragtime" and an abundance of real life people started making, for lack of a better term, appearances in the story. Then after some class discussion it was revealed to me that even Stanton, Thaw, and Nesbit were real. This style of historical characters in a fictional story intrigues me. I feel as if the story on the page could be real. More often than not I find myself reading a section and almost encouraging myself that those events could have transpired at some point....couldn't they? Now while I highly doubt Harry Houdini performed at the same prison that Thaw was being held; there is a point where it becomes believable to the reader. I also seen E.L. Doctorow's style is that of none that I have encountered before. It is almost mindbogglingly to follow his story weaving path but it is for reading an exhilarating ride. Short segments followed by abrupt stops and even more jolting starts. Topic hoping through the early 1900's is fast paced and in this style it drives the story forward.

Welcome to Ragtime Waltz.

This blog is dedicated to the works of E.L Doctorow and more specifically Ragtime, The March, The Book of Daniel, and Billy Bathgate. In these posts we'll discuss issuses with-in and literary analysis of the texts.