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Chapter 29
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ragtime, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The American Dream
Replication and Transformation
Freedom, Human Dignity, and Justice
The Cult of Celebrity
Women’s Roles
Social Inequities
Summary
Analysis
It’s a beautiful summer day when Father and Little Boy go to Giants game, and the farther they get away from New Rochelle, the more Father’s mood improves. He pays 50 cents for seats above the first baseline, which he soon regrets because this exposes Little Boy to the players’ incessant and inventive swearing. Father consults the program and discovers that both teams—the New York Giants the Boston Braves—seem to be made up almost entirely of immigrants. When he looks up, he fancies that he can see the marks of millwork and farm work in the men’s postures. And he judges several of them—including a little person on the Braves and the giant man who fills the role of the Giant’s mascot (Charles Victor Faust)—as physically or mentally unfit.
Father thinks he wants to get away from New Rochelle, but when he gets to the city, he expresses immediate dissatisfaction with what he finds there. In fact, the baseball game quickly comes to represent everything Father dislikes about the changing times: a lack of disrespect for traditional values (the players’ swearing), increasing diversity (the players’ ethnically coded names), social mobility (the fact that these men are sports heroes rather than anonymous laborers). His horror over the physical differences of some of the players echoes his dislike of others who fall short of his own white, able-bodied, male type.
Themes
Father remembers playing baseball in college, but those genteel games bore almost no resemblance to this one, which features frequent brawls. The restless crowd augments some of these by lobbing soda bottles onto the field like so many missiles. Father has thought of himself as a progressive person and as a firm believer in the American Dream—after all, he had to rebuild his own life from scratch all those years ago. But now, sitting among the common, barbarous masses of his fellow citizens, he feels oppressed.
As early as the 1850s, people were identifying baseball as America’s national pastime. Ragtime uses this association to trace the changes in the country that have happened since Father’s youth. It’s telling that he goes from reminiscing about baseball in his good old days to considering the American Dream—it shows the extent to which he consciously or subconsciously only has room within it for people who look like him.
Themes
Father asks Little Boy what he likes about the game, and Little Boy answers that the same thing happens time and again. The pitcher throws the ball, trying to fool the hitter. Usually, he does. Father points out that sometimes the hitter isn’t fooled, but before Little Boy can answer, a ball comes sailing over the baseline toward them. Little Brother catches it and, after a moment, hands it back over the fence to Charles Victor Faust.
Little Boy’s answer suggests continuity where Father has just found nothing but a stark and upsetting break with the past. This marks one of the important differences between the two: Father looks toward the past while Little Boy anticipates the changes of the future. And he is ready for them—just like he’s ready for the stray ball.
Themes
For readers interested in historical footnotes, the narrative voice adds, the Giants will eventually allow Charles Victor Faust to pitch an inning, and he will do so poorly that he’ll be fired immediately afterward. He will end up dying in an asylum some months later.
But just because the social fabric is changing doesn’t mean that everyone will benefit immediately or at all. And hard work and personal merit will still play a role in the America of the book’s future. Charles Victor Faust’s short-lived career (which began and ended on October 11, 1911) testifies to that.
Themes
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