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Chapter 33
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
That is how Mother, Father, and Little Boy meet Tateh and Little Girl. Tateh still sometimes can’t believe how far he’s come, but with creativity, drive, and audacity, he turned his initial contract for four movie books into a successful film career. The name Baron Ashkenazy, insinuating as it does, noble (rather than Eastern European Jewish) ancestry, gives him access to a stratum of society he previously couldn’t have dreamed of. He only occasionally finds himself dwelling on the past.
The meeting of the established, white, elite American family with the immigrant, Jewish family marks another important phase of the book’s interrogation of the American Dream. Tateh has done what Father did—rebuilt a better life for himself and his family—and thus proved to have the grit and determination prized in the American value system. And it’s not hard to be impressed by his wild success in the film industry, especially after the indignities he suffered as a poor immigrant worker. Yet, the book refuses to let readers forget what Tateh has had to abandon in his pursuit of success: namely Mameh and his Jewish identity.
Themes
Little Boy and Little Girl are inseparable. They explore the beach and play in the waves; they bury each other in the sand under impossibly exaggerated sculptures; they go to the boardwalk first with—and later without—their parents. When they’re allowed to go on their own, they patronize “freak shows, the penny arcades, and the tableaux vivants.” Despite their differences—he has never known poverty, want, or discomfort; she grew up surrounded by filth and poverty—they understand each other completely.
The immediate friendship between Little Boy and Little Girl suggests that the best way forward for society is tolerance and friendship, not dividing people into groups by class, race, gender, or anything else. But then, the children enjoy patronizing “freak shows,” which showcase people with physical and mental differences as oddities for the voyeuristic enjoyment of audiences. Even as the book makes a case for tolerance and equality, it forces readers to reckon with the seemingly endless number of forms discrimination can take.
Themes
One day while Little Boy and Little Girl explore the beach, they’re caught in a sudden storm. They hide under the boardwalk and watch lightning tearing across the sky and rain lashing the waves. Eventually, they realize that Mother and Tateh are on the beach, desperately searching for them. They run out from their shelter and all four embrace happily. As they walk back to the hotel, Tateh notices how young, lithe, and beautiful Mother looks—especially with her wet clothes accentuating her figure.
In a chapter heavy with symbolism about the viability and future of American society, the storm foreshadows conflicts to come. These are both immediate (Coalhouse’s next escalation) and long term, as the novel looks back on this moment in time through the history of two world wars and the Civil Rights movement. Finding the children safe suggests hope. And in light of the platonic, sibling-like friendship Little Boy and Little Girl share, it’s interesting to see Tateh taking a romantic interest in Mother.
Themes
Father naps through the entire incident. He hasn’t been sleeping well at night, plagued by an increasing sense boredom and the inescapable knowledge that—despite what Mother wants to believe—they can neither outwait nor outrun the situation they left behind at home. Thus, when the newspapers report that Coalhouse and his gang have stormed J. P. Morgan’s library and barricaded themselves inside, threatening to blow it sky high unless the municipal authorities agree to their demands, he knows the time for reckoning is at hand. He boards a northbound train and returns to New York.
In having Father sleep through the symbolically significant thunderstorm, the book strongly implies that he will not be a part of whatever salutary changes the future brings. He’s destined for obscurity and obsolescence. But even as it makes this assertion, the book asks modern day readers to reflect on whether society has lived up to the book’s hope for the future. Notably, Father’s character (socially and politically conservative) remains recognizable in the 21st century as a stereotypical kind of citizen.
Themes
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