Sociology is the study of society and human interactions, and the novel Ragtime is all about exploring the intricate and often complicated dynamics and interactions between groups or individuals in a society. Ragtime is not your typical book—it does not focus on one specific plot, have a single perspective, or even give reasoning to why events occur. Instead, it dances around different, seemingly unrelated characters and their actions, only often at the end do the characters even interact with each other, or the reason for their significance in the book is revealed. Ragtime’s goal is not telling a fictional story to entertain, but modeling the frenetic business of an emerging American time period. Less important are the characters themselves, but their interactions with others and their interaction with the fictionalized historical narrative. The question becomes not, “What is the plot?” but instead, “How do the characters and the world create a plot?”. Notably this is best highlighted by the fact that there isn’t really a plot in Ragtime but instead differently sized conflicts between people, whether internally
or externally against a system. The biggest conflict (Coalhouse) starts abruptly, ends abruptly, and the book moves rather rapidly from there.
So how would a reader begin to understand the absolute absurdity of E.L Doctorow’s Ragtime? Perhaps through the lens of sociological perspective, “a framework for thinking about, describing, and explaining how human activities are organized and how people relate to one another and respond to their surroundings”. The four main sociological perspectives, functionalist, conflict symbolic interaction, and feminist interaction all focus on different “slices” of reality and together they help acquire a bigger picture of humanity. I want to focus on the conflict perspective of society on Ragtime to piece together an overall sense of the historical world that El Doctorow has fictionally crafted.
The conflict perspective focuses on conflict as an inevitable fact of social life and the agent of social change. There is a continuous struggle between advantaged groups and disadvantaged groups, and the social arrangements that arise between the protection of the privilege. El Doctorow’s depiction of class and race struggles adds context to the historical world he's created within Ragtime and creates an unbiased portrayal of what the world may include, encompassing a wide variety of characters from either side of the conflict. A typical 20th century American nuclear family model (plus Mother’s Younger Brother), vs a struggling Jewish immigrant family living cent by cent displays the ongoing class conflict happening within the time period. In addition, J.P Morgan’s wasteful, privileged obsession about the meaning of life as an extremely powerful American tycoon vs Tateh’s experience of worker union strikes and the danger associated with them is another example of showing two sides of the overall conflict between the rich and poor. El Doctorow enhances the irony between including both sides of the class divide through forcing them to interact through mysterious circumstances, whether it be through poverty balls, Evelyn Nesbit pretending to be a poor woman and contemplating kidnapping Tateh’s daughter for her own self-interest, or even the meeting of Little Boy and Little Girl and their different viewpoints life through their lived experiences. In general, El Doctorow likes to create instances where stark difference in class dynamic is both inherent and absurd—portraying a rich murderer living a life of luxury in prison in one story while in another a woman is forced to offer her body for financial necessity and as a result cast aside from her home.
Additionally, much of the second half of Ragtime explores the underlying conflict of race through Coalhouse Walker, Mathew Henson with the Eskimos, immigrants and how the white people in the novel respond to their actions. Coalhouse Walker is driven to acts of violent revenge as his attempts to regain his sense of respect as a human being towards the white people in power cause the death of his fiancé and eventually, his death as well. He’s forced to pay a toll for discriminatory reasons, his car is desecrated with fecal matter and destroyed, and Coalhouse is pressured to just forget about both incidents and move onto his life, simply due to his race. As an intelligent, distinguished man who refuses to give in to the racist system of the time, he is rewarded with Father’s internal opinion that he (Coalhouse) didn’t know his place as a black man, and “even Mathew Henson knew his place” (Doctorow 162). On Father’s trip to the North Pole, his narrative portrays the typical white man’s opinions towards others during this time, as his thoughts constantly undermine Mathew Henson simply because of his race, although Father has done nothing to contribute while Henson has done almost everything. Peary, the person in charge of the expedition, often refers to the Eskimos providing their very necessary input to travel through the Arctic as dogs, and Father as well sees them as primitive people obsessed with having sex. Ironically enough, Father himself cheats on Mother with an Eskimo woman.
In summary, E.L. Doctorow employs the conflict perspective throughout his novel to show the social
innerworkings and forces that supply motives for interactions and actions of the people within his historical world. The often depressing contrast between advantaged groups and disadvantaged groups suits Doctorow’s satirical undertones and his playful irony of what is ethical and what is right.
Doctorow, Edgar Lawrence. Ragtime. Random House, 1975.
