American Literature

The ship is often seen carrying or taking people and equipment everywhere. The ship symbolizes the coming of age in the novel. It is called The Roosevelt, representing the new age of society, a society where immigrants and African Americans lived together.

Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser is a writer who became devastated when his first novel failed to get good reviews. Dreiser rented a room in Brooklyn and struggled to find the proper alignment for the chair (Doctorow ch 4). As a result, he shifted his chair until it achieved a full circle. Dreiser represents a society of people that wanted change in their lives. In the novel, people turned their chairs to find comfort but when they never found it, and it made them go on the cycle over and over again.

Mathew Henson
Mathew Henson was with his father Peary in the north. Peary and Henson were on their way to find the exact location of the North Pole. He was Doctrows evidence that an African American in their time have worth, and not what a typical individual thinks of them.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand
He was first seen congratulating Houdini for the invention of airplane. He was the archduke, one of the most powerful people in the novel. He was in another country, a country which was not his own. He was not treated like the other immigrants in the novel he was treated with respect the presence of Archduke Franz Ferdinand showed the double standards implemented in the country.

Baron Ashkenazy
Baron Ashkenazy used to be called Tateh, the artist in a corner of New York. He traveled out of New York because he felt like the city was corrupting his daughter. He was a Jewish immigrant who succeeded in becoming an artist in a different society. When he lived in the city, his attitude towards life was bitter. After getting out of it and finding a new purpose in life, he became more cheerful. Even the Barons daughter looked great and was becoming healthier once they were freed from the society that belittled them.

Part 2
Rich and Poor in Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
Sigmund Freud in the novel of Ragtime had described America as a mistake, a gigantic mistake (Doctorow ch 6). The rich do not care about the poor, and in the novel of Doctorow, he exposed the hardship of the poor and the result of being oppressed in their own city. The novels rich people, although they seemed to have it all, money and power, their lack of satisfaction made them vulnerable to attacks and heartbreaks.

The novel tells the story of how the old is replaced by the new, how technology sweeps the whole nation. But despite the growth the nation was receiving, the treatment of the higher class society to the lower class society remained the same there were only a few who truly cared for the lower class and treated them like a friend.

The novel Ragtime wants its readers to understand the how the rich and the poor were living in their time, how the immigrants, the African-American and the Americans treated themselves and each other.

Analysis of the rich and poor in Ragtime
The story starts with the a family whose names were not mentioned. Doctorow wanted them to be like anyone else, like every family who are lucky enough to belong in the upper class society. The youngest among the family was the one who tells the story he speaks as if he was omniscient, he is a curious child.

Doctorow started with a brief introduction of the contras of the upper class and the lower class. He described the city as having no African-Americans and no immigrants inhabiting it There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants (Doctorow ch1). The city was full of people who could not get enough of entertainment whenever entertainment was, a swarm of people gather to watch it. But after the murder of Evelyn Nesbits lover Stanford White by her husband, Harry K. Thaw, people had seen the city and the first assumption of the people who loved them dearly was wrong. There were immigrants living in New York there were African-Americans living in New York Apparently there were Negroes. There were immigrants (Doctorow ch1).

The city immigrants came mostly from Italy or in Eastern Europe. They came to America with hopes of a better life, not expecting the ill treatment of the higher class. Immigrants like Mameh, Tateh and their daughter were an example of the lower classes in New York. Both parents worked while they send their child to schools. Mameh and the little girl sow for a living, earning only few cents out of it. It was considerably small for their family that Mameh had to even sold her body for money in order to pay their bills One day with two weeks rent due she let the man have his way on a cutting table (Doctorow ch 3). The family of the narrator, on the other hand, sold patriotic materials, flags, buntings and even fireworks. They made their fortune out of it and lived much better than the family of Mameh. Their mother did not work and only tended their home and garden.

One character who really took notice of the individuals who lived in the city was Jacob Riis, a journalist who wrote about the current situation of the lower class citizens in New York. Jacob Riis wrote, They died on floors. Many people believed that filth and starvation and disease were what the immigrant got for his moral degeneracy (Doctorow ch 3). He asked Stanford White if he could design houses for the poor, but when he found White, he was too busy entertaining Riis. White was supervising his shipment that came from all over the world. In the opening night of Mamzelle Champagne, an architectural structure White made, people in the upper class celebrated its opening, while the lower class suffered heat, hunger and eventually, death, and by the end of the month a serious heat wave had begun to kill infants all over the slums. The tenements glowed like furnaces and the tenants had no water to drink. The sink at the bottom of the stairs was dry. Fathers raced through the streets looking for ice (Doctorow ch 3).

Doctorow wanted to show his readers that the lack of concern for the lower class citizens caused them to die while the upper class citizens entertained themselves with worthless events. Stanford White would rather keep himself occupied with a thing rather than help the lower class solve the problem of being suffocated in their own homes.

There were also people in the upper class who found comfort in the lower class, like Evelyn who was with the family of Tateh. She was particularly intrigued by the daughter of Tateh. Evelyn would bring them things that would help them live their everyday lives, food, linens and whatever else she could move past the old mans tormented pride (Doctorow 7).

The narrators family treated Sarah and her child as if they were one of them. Sarah, a lower class citizen who just gave birth, stayed with the narrators family. The mother cared for the baby while they stayed in their house, while Sarah was regaining her strength, his wife holding a brown baby in her arms. Upstairs the colored girl was withdrawn. Melancholy had taken the will out of her muscles (Doctorow ch 14).

Another character that Doctorow wanted to emphasize was Coalhouse Walker. He was a young colored musician who rode a Model T-Ford. In his time, the African-Americans were expected to act rudely and were usually lower class citizens. So, when an African-American citizen went to the house of the narrator, they were shocked to see him in a nice car and well mannered, the colored man was respectful....He had a neat moustache. He was dressed in the affectation of wealth to which colored people lent themselves (Doctorow ch 21). He was the father of the child the narrators mother was taking care of, the child of Sarah.

In one occasion, while Coalhouse Walker was driving to New York, he was stopped by two volunteer firemen the two firemen wanted Walker to pay them 25 in order to pass the road. Walker refused and asked for police assistance. Although the policeman agreed to listen, it did not mean that he was willing to do a thing. When he got back into his car, he found it deep in mud and damaged, his dignity was torn upon seeing human excrement in the back seat, It was spattered with mud. There was a six-inch tear in the custom pantasote top. And deposited in the back seat was a mound of fresh human excrement (Doctorow ch 23).  Walker expressed dignity in his appearance. He wanted people to respect him as much as he respects them. So, when the police officer and the chief of the firemen did not listen, he was furious.

In this occasion, Doctrow was showing that even though an African-American citizen lifted himself from poverty, the treatment of people remained. They still acted as if he was a lower class citizen, The nigger here parked his damn car in the middle of the road right in front of the fire station, aint so, boys (Doctorow ch 23).

One of the more successful stories in the novel was Baron Ashkenazy or Tateh. He was living in poverty once the city never treated him well and immigrants in the society were treated badly, they were not taken care of.  Tateh was president of the Socialist Artists Alliance of the Lower East Side. He was a proud man (Doctorow ch 7). Despite his current state, he was still in poverty he never made enough out of painting.

Tateh soon enough, after living the city, became more cheerful and youthful. His daughter looked happier outside the city. She was not always sick like the old days she was more contented outside the city, Tateh realized she was happy. She loved the trip. Holding the suitcase on his lap with just one arm Tateh put the other around his child. He found himself smiling (Doctorow ch 12).

The city did not treat its immigrants well. As soon as Tateh and his daughter left the city, they suddenly felt more free and happier. Tateh used to look older than his original age, but after they left the city and lived somewhere else, his face brightened and tended to look more youthful. Tateh in the end married the mother of the narrator after his father died and made a movie that would end racism in their society. It was a film which showcased kids of all color, different sizes, rich and poor, playing and living without caring about a thing.

Conclusion
The old society never really cared for the lower class citizens some who belong to the upper class society only helps the lower class in order to compensate the guilt of doing something horrible. Those who truly care about the lower class are not taken seriously.

The gap between the rich and the poor until now is one of the problems of society, but unlike in the past, the society today takes notice of these things. There are non-profit organizations that deal with people who are not able to care for themselves, soup kitchens to feed those who are not able to feed themselves.