Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- What is the significance of ragtime music in the novel? How is its use in the novel and in the novel's title symbolic?
- If you wrote a novel about our own period of history, what famous people would you include? Who do you think people might write about from our time 100 years from now?
- Why do you think Doctorow doesn't name the characters in the family, instead calling them by their roles? (Father, Mother, etc.)
- What modern technologies do we see being invented in the novel? How do these inventions shape the lives of the characters?
- What is the significance of the time period Doctorow chooses to portray? What is unique about America during this time?
- Who do you think the narrator of Ragtime is? While it seems the narrator is omniscient, who do you think it might be, and why do you think Doctorow doesn't tell us outright?
- What are some of the viewpoints Doctorow presents on relationships and marriage and the way they are changing during this time period?
- Doctorow never uses quotation marks in the novel. Why do you think he uses this technique?
- How is New York portrayed in the novel and why do you think Doctorow sets the novel there?
- What is Harry Houdini's role in the novel? Why does Doctorow focus on him as a character?
- There's a quotation from Scott Joplin at the beginning of the book, called an epigraph, in which he says that "it is never right to play Ragtime fast." What does this say about the pacing of the book, as well as the time Doctorow was writing about? How does it compare with our own time?