Transcript Unseen Prose from Ragtime by EL Doctorow

Unseen Prose from Ragtime
by Edgar Lawrence Doctorow
Insight and Analysis
The novel Ragtime published in 1975
• Captures the spirit of America in the era between
the turn of the 20th century and the first world
war;
• Blends fictional characters and historical figures
into narrative framework that revolves around
characters, events, and ideas important in
American history;
• The novel – unusual for the irreverent way that
historical figures such as Henry Ford,
Harry Houdini, JP Morgan, and Emma Goldman
are woven into the narrative;
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance
published in 1850
• Captures the spirit of immigrants from England making up
the Puritan community of New England in the 1640s before
it became independent America in 1776 following the
American War of Independence;
• Blends fictional characters and historical figures, notably
Governor Richard Bellingham (1592-1672), and the
Reverend Mr. John Wilson, (1591-1667)
• Also blends the real with the imaginary – that of elements
of fantasy within an allegorical narrative framework
springing from The Custom House, and symbolically
centered on the three Scaffold Scenes around which are
presented characters, events, and ideas from different
narrative points of view, and alternate versions of events;
Examples of elements of Fantasy from
The Custom House p32 and
End of Chapter 3, p64
I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me,
then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether
physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat; as if the letter
were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron.
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With the same hard demeanour, she was led back to
prison, and vanished from the public gaze within its ironclamped portal. It was whispered, by those who peered
after her, that the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam
along the dark passage-way of the interior.
From Chapter 4 p67
As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on the
scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch
into Hester’s breast, as if it had been red-hot.
Reminder / Remember
• This blending / fusion of the fantastical dimension /
element in Hawthorne’s narrative method is central to his
concept of Romance; in what Hawthorne refers to as the
‘imaginative faculty’; blending / fusing –
the Actual and the Imaginary; ‘the real world and fairyland’
• the novel for that reason is subtitled
‘A Romance’
• The details and justification for this narrative approach /
method is made apparent to the reader in the prefacing
Custom-House chapter - See in particular pages 35 to 37
Hawthorne’s Narrative Style applied to
the Doctorow Passage
The immigrants were immediately sensitive to the power
of the immigration officials which seemed so agonizingly
strange and enormously threatening that it seemed to
manifest itself through a dazzling nightmarish green light
that radiated from their eyes as if they were beings from
an otherworldly demonic dimension. After the
immigrants were name-tagged, the ignominious letters of
their new name forthwith seemed to scorch into each
one’s breast, as if it had been red-hot.
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How does adopting elements of Hawthorne’s narrative
method to this passage modify / alter intended Effects?
Unseen prose from the novel, Ragtime
Opening two paragraphs of Chapter 3
• Central framework of ideas: Presents a descriptive
account of American immigration officials and
the arrival of European immigrants
in the United States at the turn of the 20th century
from a third person narrative perspective;
Structure of the Passage –
(Development / Progression of the central tension)
• First paragraph the narrator describes their arrival and
initial experiences of New York;
• The second paragraph – shift in angle of narrative
perspective to focus on what is for many immigrants
their eventual fate;
Methods of Presentation
• Critical Insight: The narrator presents the immigrants
throughout as passive; they do not act; rather things
happen to them, and as a result they react;
How? Stylistic Analysis:
• The grammatical subjects of most of the first few
sentences refer to the immigrants, but NOTICE • the verbs they govern are predominantly expressed in
the passive voice of the verb – ‘they were taken,’ ‘they
were tagged’, ‘they were given showers and arranged
on benches, ‘they were somehow absorbed in the
tenements, ‘they were despised’;
Analysis (cont)
• It is only when the narrative point of view shifts
to convey the prejudices of the already
established community of New Yorkers, that
actions are attributed to them such as –
• ‘They stole. They drank. They raped their own
daughters. They killed each other casually.’
• The brevity of these syntactic descriptions
are indicative of the New Yorker’s dismissive
attitudes, thus suggestively calling into question
their authenticity, their reliability.
Analysis (cont)
Contrasting Power and Passivity
Contrasting the passivity of the immigrants are
the active verb forms used to describe the
behaviour of the Immigration Officials they
meet on their arrival that demonstrates the
force of their authority and their dazzling power:
• ‘These officials changed names they couldn’t
pronounce and tore people from their
families…’
Analysis (cont)
Note Connotations
• The noun phrase ‘human warehouse’
together with the narrator’s description of the
immigration process, characterize
the American society of the time as
mechanized, dealing with people in much
the same way as it deals with goods;
• Their passivity in the face of this social
machine continues in the second paragraph
with their final submission to this process:
Analysis (cont)
• ‘Wagons picked up derelicts’ (Note connotations)
• These derelicts are then laid to rest in a wholly
mechanical setting where the human response to
their American experience seems to be taken
over by machinery (again noting connotations) • ‘The faces of the dead were upturned into the
streams of water that poured over them like the
irrepressible mechanism in death of their own
tears,’ whose precision is then dispassionately
described in clinical expository detail:
Analysis
‘The corpses lay on tables of galvanized iron.
From the bottom of each table a drainpipe
extended to the floor. Around the rim of the
table was a culvert. And into the culvert ran the
water sprayed constantly over each body from
an overhead faucet.’
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Note diction, and connotations of key words;
Intended effects?
Synoptic Overview
Noting also the Irony
• The passage overall effectively encapsulates the
progressive degradation and final destruction of
these immigrants by a dehumanizing society;
• At the end of the first paragraph there are two
expansions of narrative perspective:
• One social, giving the views of the New Yorkers;
• The other perspective is historical – ‘Among those
who despise them the most were the secondgeneration Irish, whose fathers had been guilty of
the same crimes’ – ironically suggesting that
the whole process is doomed to repetition.
Two Narrative Prose Styles
• Is the voice of the narrator intended to be
understood as being spoken or written?
1) Loose style / Additive or Coordinating Style /
‘Go-with-the-flow’ casual type of narrative style
• The effect of not being planned, of no order,
no control, but of spontaneity, haphazardness,
and chance; mirroring thought in free motion;
2) A more deliberative, subordinating style
• Suggestive of thought being carefully rehearsed;
achieved by being carefully planned in advance;
more controlled;
Extract from Engleby
a novel by Sebastian Faulks
I don’t do much these days, but I find listening
to music helps distract me. I’m allowed a radio
and CD player in my room and I’ve been hearing
one or two of the old records I used to like at
university. What I’m looking for is songs that buy
into the human illusion in a really simple way,
but have just a touch of comfort in them.
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Illustrative of the Loose / Additive Style