Characters

You maybe realized it when you first saw the character names "Mother," "Father," or "Mother's Young Brother." Or maybe you realized it when you stumbled on the Yiddish "Tateh" (Daddy) and "Mameh" (Mommy). Or when you realized that there were characters named "Little Girl" and "Little Boy."

Whatever caused the "Aha!" explosion in your brain, you just knew you were dealing with something heavily allegorical. The novel Ragtime ain't just a story that happens to take place within a certain time in history: it is about that time in history. The end of the novel signals the end of the Ragtime Era:

And by that time the era of Ragtime had run out, with the heavy breath of the machine, as if history were no more than a tune on a player piano. (40.24)

Through this novel, we gain access to a particular crossroads in American history. And the characters that aren't based on historical figures are totally about ways to approach the dawn of a new century. Father is stuck in the past. Mother comes into her own. Tateh carpes the ol' diem and becomes a self-made man. Mother's Younger Brother defines himself by his relationships to other people: the early 20th century was crawling with movements and stands to take. Little Boy and Little Girl just stand back and take it all in.

We invite you to mosey on over to our Character Analysis section and look into these characters (and what they symbolize) in more depth.