Blog 9: Overall View of Ragtime
Now that I have finished reading “Ragtime”, there are many thoughts and observations that I can express. I did not really enjoy the ending of the book, no not because this great book came to and end, but the fact that everyone seemed to come together, no real narrator was established, and it ends with a sentence about Harry K. Thaw, who hasn’t appeared in the book since the beginning part. Everyone either dies or go on to live their life harmoniously. The ending helped me interpret the overall theme of the book as change, because everyone seems to take on a different path in the ending. For example, Mother marries Tateh, who Evelyn Nesbit wanted to marry, but she became unattractive and had fallen into “obscurity.” I also didn’t like how the last chapter dealt a lot with a trip of J.P. Morgan who just ended up dying anyways. I don’t really understand the connection or meeting of Morgan and Ford. I feel like they didn’t really have any contribution to the story except for historical figures who played a major role in the changing of America. The overall text to me highlighted an important turning point in American history just before the start of WWII. All of the characters throughout the story encounter a change in their life, even if that change is prospered by the change of a corresponding character. I felt like I was waiting for something exciting to happen throughout the story, but it never really did. The book was more or less the accounts of all these people’s lives. Since the book gave these descriptions of all these different people’s lives it made me think that it really is trying to hammer home a theme rather than create just a fictional story where there is a plot, a climax, and an end. “Ragtime” incorporated both fictional and non-fictional characters which gave the book some reality in my mind.
