The White Pickett Fence in Ragtime
When I was reading ragtime, one of the first things I noticed
was that the family lived in a "white picket fence house" the
quintessential sort of theme in the American dream. People's goals were
generally to work their way up through capitalism and live a suburban lifestyle
with a family and their son or daughter. In my mind while this is usually seen
as the end goal, I seem to not be able to think about the white Picket fence as
a sort of dystopia. It just seems so unnatural for that sort of lifestyle where
nothing goes wrong and it's just a repeat of everyday where the stereotypical
father goes to work and the stereotypical mother stays home and takes care of
the house while the generic son or daughter goes to school. It reminded me of a
video I watched with a stereotypical suburban family goes through basically the
same day. https://youtu.be/mVLrBJYGxk4.
In my eyes, each member of the family was living through this kind of dystopia
except for Father. They each are forcing themselves through this kind of life.
Then E. L. Doctorow basically uses Father's trip as an experiment to see what
would happen if this stereotypical lifestyle for that time period was turned
upside down. He liberates all of the characters, Mother takes charge of the
business and Younger brother starts his nightlife. Father comes back because
like we discussed, he is still a being of the past and doesn't mesh well with
the new Family. He still thinks in terms of the ideal American dream. If you
think as Father would, he is confused because he built this from his own hands
and he thought everyone was comfortable. In most dystopias, the
"ruler", "dictator" or whatever term you would like to use
usually perceives the society which they created as a utopia for all the
citizens, where everyone wants to live and while some people may have to
sacrifice, in turn it is for the benefit of the entire microcosm. That's why he
is confused when he arrives because he sees what he perceives as a dystopia
because his former "utopia" has been abolished.
In the end I think E. L. Doctorow
uses the white picket fence as an analogy to a sort of societal cage and uses
Father's trip as the key to breaking the cage. Therefore, Doctorow becomes like
a psychologist performing an experiment in this scenario.
I don't know if I would go so far as to say that the lives the family are living are part of a dystopia, for the most part I think that the family doesn't mind what they do in their lives. The one exception to this is, as you mentioned, Mother it's pretty clear she is not happy with her situation, and when her husband leaves she is quick to take charge.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure that Mother's Younger Brother was affected by Father leaving. It's mentioned in the book that he kind of goes where he pleases, so I think he had been going out at night for a while before Father left.
Interesting interpretation. I think although it looked like a white picket fence to an outsider, doctorow establishes from the beginning that it wasn't a perfect situation. There was the dynamic btw mother and father not connecting properly, physically or verbally. Also, younger brother definitely did not fit the mold of white picket conformity in any way. Like all situations in life, it's more complicated than a stereotype and there's a lot more underneath the surface that most people see.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the opening paragraph especially represents the "white picket fence," and that Doctorow is also subverting it. He takes an "archetypal" family, and as you said, performs a thought experiment on them. He shows them for who they really are, highlighting all of their problems and disconformities. Maybe Doctorow is subverting their superficial appearance in society.
ReplyDeleteI think Father's character in particular is portrayed as antiquated. It was almost as if he went off the the Arctic as a nineteenth-century man, and when he came back, he was completely unable to adapt. What do you think about Doctorow's ironic treatment of Father?
I like this post and agree that Doctorow definitely looks to subvert ideas about the American Dream throughout the story, especially the idea of whether this supposed idealized suburban lifestyle is more dystopian or Utopian. To me, Doctorow's glorification of Younger Brother's choice to renounce his white privilege and end up dying in the Mexican Revolution also supports this viewpoint. Younger Brother has all of the Utopian privilege one could want--he is white and born into a middle class family--but instead cannot find himself in that world and trades all of that in to fight for something that truly matters to him.
ReplyDeleteDoctorow is definitely subverting the white picket fence families of America here, but I'm not sure I would say Father is the ruler or creator or dictator of his family. If I remember correctly, he did get quite a bit of money from his father. He also doesn't have much control over his family. He goes to the North Pole pretty quickly, so we don't get a lot of time with the whole family before his return. But I didn't get the sense that he was the true head of the household, and he certainly wasn't when he returned. I also didn't get a great sense that he created much for his family --- Mother complains later on that if he wants to make her happy, he'd finally get a maid to help her. But to some extent, I do see what you're saying. Father follows in his own father's footsteps by spending money wisely and keeping the family in good financial standings, so he is somewhat responsible for "creating the family." Still, my impressions of him after he returns don't lend well to that interpretation.
ReplyDeleteDoctorow definitely messes with the idea of the perfect American family. In class we discussed how it seems like the family's story begins with Houdini crashing his car right there. It's as if the family didn't have a story until the plot comes crashing into them and they don't quite know how to deal with all the new developments. Father especially seems confused by his new surroundings after returning from an anti-climactic trip to the pole (in which he doesn't actually get to the pole because his toes keep freezing, ouch).
ReplyDeleteI think it was interesting how you made the fence as a symbol for how the rest of the family members were "trapped" by the Father's ideas. You made a good point when you said Doctorow wanted something to change and made an opportunity for Father to take a break from his family. I definitely think that because Father was gone, this opened up a lot of opportunities for the family to create individual self expressions through whatever they were immersed in at the moment. Mother definitely found more of her identity as she took charge of many things.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting point, I've never thought about this before! I definitely think Doctorow is using the idea of the white picket fence as a representation of the American Dream for this family. I also agree that father's presence was a sort of 'trap' on the rest of the family, whether he realized it or not. His reaction to everything after he returned from his trip makes a lot more sense when you think about it in terms of his previous utopian life being shattered.
ReplyDeleteYo, I can't believe you actually found that animation too. Well, there's a part 2 to the animation where it shows total society collapse when people revolted. I think in the book, Father thinks a lot like how a slave owner would think in the old days. Something among the lines of "We gave them food and shelter, ungrateful, etc etc" I agree with Faizah's comment on Father's present was basically a trap for his entire family. When he left, people were left to leave their cage. Mother was able to grow, Younger Brother found his place in a group (albeit violent activists).
ReplyDeleteI think it’s really interesting to compare the family in Ragtime to the one in that video, and to look at Doctorow like a psychologist performing an experiment. It’s an interesting look at the actual idea of the white picket fence, especially with everyone putting on their figurative masks to pretend that everything is okay, when as a reader we know that there are all kinds of problems. I think the fact that all the problems disappear when Father is taken away is super interesting and could be Doctorow trying to say that the American dream is dead or doesn’t actually work.
ReplyDeleteI think the funny thing is that the suburban, nuclear family American Dream (TM) didn't come about until the 1950s, and that in the early 1900s, living was largley urban, or largley rural, and american cities don't have suburbs, or white picket fence houses, yet.
ReplyDelete