When I was researching for my panel presentation the article I was using stated, “The memory of the young boy, the principal narrator, reaches backward to 1902, when the house in New Rochelle was built, and forward to the marriage of Tateh and Mother in 1917 “ (Ostendorf 579).
While I was reading ragtime, I never thought that the Little Boy could be the narrator. However, now that I think about it, I think it could fit. That makes sense why the mother and father of the family are called Mother and Father throughout the book. It also makes sense why the information on Coalhouse came from other sources and the narration didn’t get in his mind. He’s not directly connected to the little boy, so everything he can gather either must have come from his father, uncle, or newspapers. Having access to Mother’s Younger Brother’s diary also seems more probable. For people not close to him and not seeming to have any major contact with any of the family members (such as Ford, Morgan, or Houdini) I’m not sure how the little boy would get that information. He does seem to have supernatural powers (like making Houdini’s car stop in front of his house and predicting his father would take him to the baseball game) but there is still a lot of information the little boy would have to read out of Morgan or Ford’s mind. And, if he could read their mind, why wouldn’t he read Coalhouse’s? Perhaps the narrator changes at certain points?
I sifted through google to see if Doctorow confirmed that the little boy was the narrator at any point, and I found the answer in an interview of Doctorow done by Michael Wutz in 1994.
Doctorow: The hidden narrator of Ragtime is probably the little boy in later times
Wutz: Excuse me for interrupting here. Why do you say "probably"? Of late, that's a question that has received quite some attention within the critical community-whether or not the little boy is, indeed, the narrator.
Doctorow: Because he was hidden to me for so much of that book. At a certain point quite near the end he betrays a personal relationship to everything he has narrated and appears to be the son of Mother and Father, namely the little boy. I'm pretty sure that's who it is, but I'm not sure that that is essential for reading the book to know that.
Even Doctorow isn’t totally positive about the little boy being the narrator. I guess it’s even still open to interpretation. What do you all think?
For more of the interview:
I think Doctorow is definitely leaving the identity of the narrator up for interpretation. Since he loves the factual straight forward style of writing, the lack of a narrator removes any bias from what he is trying to convey, which helps a bit with his credibility.
ReplyDeleteIf the little boy is the narrator, which I an inclined to believe, then this means that some very interesting conversations must have taken place between him and Tateh, or Younger Brother for example for the boy to know all the details of this story. Also I think this idea kind of explains the different pace of the last chapter. It seems that all that matters to the narrator is that the story they wanted to tell had been told, but they were left the task of wrapping up. This wrapping up chapter very much feels as if the narrator is looking back on events that happened, and summarizing because he is done with the novel, but feels obligated to end it somehow.
ReplyDeleteActually, in the musical Ragtime (in which I happened to be the little boy when I was in it), the little boy begins with this line. While other characters narrate their own parts, it is also important to point out that in the musical version, the Little Boy is also somewhat of a fortune-teller/future-predictor. To begin, the "warn the duke" line is very much stressed throughout the action. In addition, the little boy wakes up in the middle of the night halfway through the script and envisions an explosion and imminent deaths, correctly announcing Coalhouse's first attack. Last musical analogy, I promise. The two aren't entirely the same, so I really try to stay in the text (it's a little more interesting, I must admit). But this was too hard to pass up.
ReplyDeleteOhh, so you're saying that in the book the little boy as a grown was possibly including snippets from the future into the story just because he was narrating everything that already happened? Do you think it's possible that since the little boy is older, he included some things that he wish he said to Houdini (like warn the duke). Does this call into question the reliability of the little boy?
DeleteI'm struck by Doctorow's admission that it may not be "essential for reading the book to know" that the Little Boy is the narrator (if he is). It's an interesting question to ponder--in part because we talked about "the narrator" and the question of his irony and point of view throughout, assuming we meant something like "Doctorow." But I'm not sure what difference it makes. Clearly, the now-grown boy would be imagining or projecting the scenes that take place in the "gaps" of history, just like Doctorow. The other limits of his point of view (e.g. the "historical" background on Coalhouse) are also used by Doctorow to create the illusion of such fictional characters as "historical" (and once Younger Bro heads to Mexico, he would be apart from the Little Boy's experience, so he would similarly depend on research and the diary to fill in the narrative).
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense to me that Doctorow himself can't answer this question decisively--it suggests that it doesn't make a huge difference either way, but at the same time, the idea that the Little Boy represents the generation that comes of age in the wake of the Ragtime period is crucial to the historical narrative: we see this past as directly forming the world he occupies as an adult.
I think that if the boy is the narrator, it makes sense that he is narrating from a point in the future, and that's how he knows most of the historical information. There are some things that don't fit together perfectly, however. How would he have known about Harry K. Thaw? Or about Mother's Younger Brother coming out of the closet? There are some other issues, such as the character of Mameh and his knowledge of what happened when Evelyn Nesbit visited Tateh. Maybe the book is narrated by the Little Girl as well?
ReplyDeleteOooo, that's a really good point. I never thought about that before. It would totally make sense that the little girl could be the narrator in some parts also-- like with the intro with Tateh.
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