Essay Questions

What is the significance of the author choosing to open Ragtime with its epigraph?

The novel commences with an epigraph, a quote from the Father of Ragtime, Scott Joplin: “Do not play this piece fast It is never right to play Ragtime fast” Ragtime is a novel defined in part by its pace. It is a book comprised of forty chapters. While it is hardly a slim volume, it is significantly less bulky than most novels with as many chapters. The length of the typical chapter is, in fact, just a few pages, giving it a quick pace. In addition, the future events are often telegraphed by the author through allusion or even sometimes an outright explicit indication, a technique which serves to push the reader’s interest forward. In consideration of the novel’s overall ironic tone, the epigraph seems to serve the purpose of suggesting that the natural construction of the book’s reading pace should be consciously decelerated by the reader.

What is the event which radicalizes Coalhouse Walker to take actions some might describe as terrorism?

Arguably, the central singular act of the narrative which can be identified as the turning point of the “plot” such as it is would be the vandalizing of Coalhouse Walker’s car. From that point on much of the narrative is directed toward the subplot of Walker’s fight against prejudice, discrimination and racism. But even after Chief Conklin’s despicable actions and the exhibition of systematic corruption which follows, Walker’s reactions remains entirely within the confines of that system. In the aftermath of the violence stemming from that radicalization, the narrator informs the reader that the conventional wisdom held that “Coalhouse Walker had never exhausted the peaceful and legal means of redress before taking the law into his own hands.” He then goes on to redress this widely held presumption: “This is not entirely true.” In fact, it is not the actions of the firefighters which directly leads to Walker’s violence, but rather an incident in which the element of racism involved is ambiguous, but not the element of unnecessary violent reaction: the ultimately fatal police attack of an unarmed Sarah when she rushes to the Presidential candidate to plead Walker’s case, but is mistaken for an assassin.

What specific element related to the subplot of Tateh speaks to the hypocrisy of certain anti-immigrant agendas?

Tateh is a poor immigrant who leaves his wife after she resorts to prostitution so that rent payments may be met. He faces poverty, is beaten by police, faces discrimination and corruption, nearly loses his daughter to Evelyn Nesbit, nearly loses his daughter again on the train, lives in filthy conditions, works hard and gets nowhere and nothing. He is the very image of the portrait of immigrant drain on the system and resources of America painted by those wishing to stem the tide of the poor and uneducated foreigners by instituting a merit-based system by which only those who can prove their contribution to the economy will be allowed to cross in America’s borders. Then Tateh gets something that all his hard work and talent have not: he gets lucky. He is finally in the right place at the right time with the right people and he disappears from the narrative for an extended period of time. When reappears, it is Baron Ashkenazy and suddenly the same hard-working, talent immigrant who was overlooked and rejected is welcomed and respected. The implicit message is that had Tateh entered America as an immigrant under the false veil of aristocratic title, his story might well have started much differently; that a meritocratic immigration system only provides an illusion of superiority.