Father's experience with postmoderism
There is no doubt that E. L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime is a post modernist work, and one of the key elements of post modernism is the idea that there are many equally valid ways of viewing reality. Often, when someone settles down in life, they stop seeing alternative viewpoints and settle on their own version of reality. When that person then makes a major life change, they are exposed to other realities and they have to question which one they will accept as true.
Doctorow introduces a major life change for father when he returns home from his arctic expedition. By doing this, he challenges many of the assumptions that father had accepted as facts. For example, father had always thought of himself as a strong man, the most important person in the household. When he is wandering through the house, both of these notions are challenged. He finds that mother had taken over business operations, workers had unionized, and that the business had actually grown despite his hiatus. His prior understanding that he was a strong business leader who was important to his company had been shattered.
The most striking aspect of father's reality that had to be reevaluated is father's physical appearance. Despite his eyes being physically attached to his body, father had managed to create an image of himself that was completely different from how others saw him. He realizes this when he looks in the mirror, "it gave back the gaunt, bearded face of a derelict, a man who lacked a home. His shaving mirror on the Roosevelt had not revealed this. He removed his clothes. He was shocked by the outlines of his body, the ribs and clavicle, white-skinned and vulnerable, the bony pelvis, the organ hanging there redder than anything else" (Doctorow, 109). Father had constructed an image of himself based on his life prior to the arctic expedition and a small mirror on the expedition. It is like father gained a completely new set of eyes after returning home, a view of a completely different reality.
Doctorow uses the idea that reality is different for different observers through the book. Some circumstances seen almost absurd, like Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand thinking that Houdini invented the airplane, but many reveal how the nature of reality can be strikingly different for different for different people. If a man can not realize how others see his own body, then can we really be sure what the true nature of reality is?
Doctorow introduces a major life change for father when he returns home from his arctic expedition. By doing this, he challenges many of the assumptions that father had accepted as facts. For example, father had always thought of himself as a strong man, the most important person in the household. When he is wandering through the house, both of these notions are challenged. He finds that mother had taken over business operations, workers had unionized, and that the business had actually grown despite his hiatus. His prior understanding that he was a strong business leader who was important to his company had been shattered.
The most striking aspect of father's reality that had to be reevaluated is father's physical appearance. Despite his eyes being physically attached to his body, father had managed to create an image of himself that was completely different from how others saw him. He realizes this when he looks in the mirror, "it gave back the gaunt, bearded face of a derelict, a man who lacked a home. His shaving mirror on the Roosevelt had not revealed this. He removed his clothes. He was shocked by the outlines of his body, the ribs and clavicle, white-skinned and vulnerable, the bony pelvis, the organ hanging there redder than anything else" (Doctorow, 109). Father had constructed an image of himself based on his life prior to the arctic expedition and a small mirror on the expedition. It is like father gained a completely new set of eyes after returning home, a view of a completely different reality.
Doctorow uses the idea that reality is different for different observers through the book. Some circumstances seen almost absurd, like Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand thinking that Houdini invented the airplane, but many reveal how the nature of reality can be strikingly different for different for different people. If a man can not realize how others see his own body, then can we really be sure what the true nature of reality is?
This is a really interesting take on this whole idea of historical fiction. We realize that the way we see characters could be different to how characters visualize others. I never thought about the perspective of Father when he comes back from the trip but I think it's interesting how you mention that Father sees himself in a different pair of eyes as if the trip to the Arctic changed him as a whole being. Father probably realizes that when he got back from the trip everything changed, including himself. Doctorow wanted us and Father to realize that the family would be alright without him, maybe even better.
ReplyDeleteI like the points you raise here, an image is viewed differently by different people. Seeing yourself for what you are can be shocking and disappointing. I think that by putting this realization in the book, Doctorow was able to reveal the passage of time and its effects upon Father, which brought a scary truth into the reader. The idea of the ideal family that was originally portrayed is harshly shattered and everything feels raw. As an empathetic reader, you can certainly get a lot out of that scene... All of that said, the idea of reality is how things actually exist, but the truth can be hard to see sometimes, especially when we don't want to see it.
ReplyDeleteIt would fit your view of Father's inability to change with the times as "postmodern" to point out that Father is a literal embodiment of a patriarchal order (his "name" in the book is capital-F Father!), and a white patriarchal order at that. His cultural authority shifts profoundly over the course of the novel, to the point where he's quite literally replaced by a creative and self-reinventing immigrant, who is also named "father" but in a different dialect. With Tateh (or "The Baron"), the implication is that we have a new, more modern version of fatherhood (and to depict these different versions existing in the same historical space is "postmodern").
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