Father and MYB: The Narrative Parallels of 2 Failures (and some other thoughts about Ragtime)

 

So, that concludes Ragtime

    as of 2/2/2024, and my God was it certainly... an interesting book to have had the pleasure of experiencing. I find the comparison of this book to some kind of historical fan-fiction to be both absolutely hilarious, but at the same time scarily accurate. We've countlessly encountered firsthand how Doctorow just tosses in a ton of historical figures to use as "surprise ingredients"  for this mysterious pot of stew for a story, and use them in all sorts of little intriguing ways to supplement the other historical characters, or the main characters, of which are Doctorow's own creations (this encapsulates our Nameless family, Tateh and Sha, Sarah, and then we have Coalhouse, who sits sort of at this strange middle ground of historical and fiction). 

Together as readers, we've witnessed:

•  Houdini's car very conveniently arrive, and break down outside the Nameless family's house, prompting them to interact for a brief moment,
• Father being placed onto his little "North Pole Expedition" with Peary, beginning his own arc in which he feels out-of place, 
• Evelyn Nesbit, Tateh, and Emma Goldman at a huge socialist meeting, the very meeting which Tateh runs away from with Sha in tow,  questioning his place in New York, and soon ready begin a new life,
• Coalhouse and Sarah's arc suddenly dropping into the story and vastly altering the plot the more he stays, heavily impacting the lives of each and every member of the Namlesses. (It was almost as if someone snuck an odorless, colorless, slow-acting poison into this plot pot of story stew. That was a silly sentence, ignore me)
• Coalhouse Walker III, Sarah are watched over/cared for by Mother
• Father becoming arms dealer, and then dying on a WWI ship 💀
• MYB becoming a "revolutionary" for Coalhouse, then running away to Mexico,  using his explosives in war and also dying 💀💀
• Mother, and the Boy later meet Tateh and Sha, leading to their eventual happy marriage
• Emma Goldman intending to be seen as sort of a source of empowerment for Evelyn Nesbit

And...most infamously, and regrettably...

• "jism" ...😶

I... shouldn't have to explain that any further than it needs to be. 

    But alas, my blog post today does have to do with both Mother's Younger Brother, alongside Father. Some of you may recall our discussion on the 2nd to last day before we ended Ragtime, where I made connections between the two. The parallel they carry being that...

they're both ✨failures✨

Let's look at the Old Failure, Father. He begins this story as a proud, wealthy familyman. Sure, Mother ran away the first chance she got when they were having coitus, and he's emotionally distant from his Houdini-obsessed son, but do not be fooled! He has the power of patriarchy on his side to give him enough fragile masculinity and a superiority complex to give him a false sense that he's respected! To flaunt his proud, wealthy, masculineness, he departs in the early chapters to go on an Expedition to the North Pole, (featuring Robert Peary and two Inuits)!

Now, this little excursion he takes is something that feels hyped up...but in reality, many things end up falling flat during these events, which just make Father look sad and pathetic, as if the stars hadn't aligned quite right for this man, and decided to do everything in their galactic power to forsake him:

• He gets frostbite a lot, like on his foot, knee, hands, and he's unable to keep it away, to the point where people have to keep getting him treated for it, which distracts from the mission at hand.
• He doesn't actually get to go to the Pole, and he envies Mathew Henson, who does (Father resents and envies Henson for being able to go, even though Henson is literally the assistant, and Father is just some dude who paid to come,  Could it be an early indicator of his prejudicial beliefs?) Regardless, he's non-committal to the expedition, but he sure as heck will say "I've been on a North Pole Expedition!" Again, he's a dude who paid to come, clearly wanting to feel included in something he sees with importance, but there's still an element of privilege being exhibited, meaning he has the choice to say and do all these things, but also back out whenever things turn out unexpectedly. That seems to be a common thread throughout a few other characters, but that's something for another time.
• Throughout all of the chapters, there isn't really a single noteworthy thing which Father does, other than give Peary an American Flag from his Flag factory. All the things we read are just the things other people do and how Father reacts to those things
• He returns with a chest not full of treasure but a bunch of stinky lame things which kinda sit around doing nothing in their living room
• He also has a lingering fish smell upon his return
• He's noticeably more gaunt and tired, almost like a shell of his former self.

By the time he's back, all the other characters have received some form of important development, meanwhile he's just some stinky fish dude who might as well have stayed with his family.

• Mother has taken Coalhouse III under her wing, and has become less of an obedient housewife, even taking over his business duties while he had gone
• The Boy has become more mature upon learning more from Grandfather
• MYB is now with Evelyn Nesbit (but not for long, thank goodness. that creepy obsessive voyeur should not have been given the time of day

There are many other times in which it feels like Father has been particularly hushed, downplayed, or disconnected from the family, even when he desperately tries. We see Mother discouraging his racist remarks towards Coalhouse, him trying to connect with The Boy by taking him to a baseball game yet only finding things to complain about and fail to understand why The Boy's so interested, or when Tateh, Mother, Sha, and The Boy experience a powerful emotional moment together, and he's just sulking in his room while it all happens. Father, upon returning to New Rochelle to aid in the Coalhouse situation, does finally get some moments in which he's taken seriously, specifically by becoming the negotiator for the authorities and Coalhouse, and finally bringing things to its close.

Now, we get to the infamous M.Y.B, the other, the weirder, but also much less of a failure. One of his earliest defining quirks/traits/details is that he is pretty much directionless in life, except for being  OBSESSED with Evelyn Nesbit to a point where it's played off in a comical manner by Doctorow. As Nesbit is on her little secret detour to the Lower East Side, obsessing over a poor immigrant family, we read hints that she's being followed from afar by M.Y.B. Of course, after that, is him pathetically getting caught in the closet at Emma Goldman's apartment, which in one of the most unexpected lines I read after that was “ Evelyn Nesbit was ahead of her time. Her former chief lover Stanford White had been a fashionably burly man, and her husband Harry K. Thaw though not as large was nevertheless soft and wide, but her new lover, Mother’s Younger Brother, was as lean and hard as a young tree.”

...Needless to say I was in disbelief that they had suddenly become an item, but I was less surprised when 3 chapters later I read: "“Mother’s Younger Brother was losing his blond hair. He was pale, and thin, and more uncommunicative than ever. Most remarkable was the time he now spent at work, twelve and fifteen hours a day. He had taken for his province the fireworks division of the business and had designed dozens of new rockets, firewheels, and an unusual firecracker packed not cylindrically but in a spherical container. With its fuse looking like a stem it was named a Cherry Bomb. The two men went one morning to Younger Brother’s testing ground at the end of the trolley line, in the salt marshes.” He looks more sad, and dejected, and begins making bombs (which foreshadows his role later in the story). Come to find out why, and it's...  “The young man was in mourning. Gradually Evelyn Nesbit had become indifferent to him and when he persisted in his love she had become hostile. Finally one day she had gone off with a professional ragtime dancer," and so he wishes to "pack his heart with gunpowder and blow it up."

With no Evelyn Nesbit to serve as his primary direction in life, I suppose the next thing after that was...make bombs? 

But then we have Coalhouse who comes along in the story, and when the Nameless family hears about the act of injustice which Coalhouse had faced, MYB is all in, and he leaves the house after a disagreement with Father. Now, we see that MYB finally has some actual direction, it's to try to make things right. Like Father in this arc, he's finally about to get taken seriously to a degree. This arc, or awakening even, is what makes MYB a lot less of failure as compared too to Father

A bit similar to Father in the expedition, MYB joins this Coalhouse Conglomerate as a white man from a wealthy family. Though this time, he's actually a useful asset, by being able to create bombs. He even rigs an entire building to explode! But the thing that's still in-common with Father is that they're both non-committal, even when MYB is urging Coalhouse to keep it up and that they almost have what they want, MYB still agrees to just take off with the Model T, and fade away into public obscurity. He's someone who can easily just do that because of his background of privilege. We see the scene of him wiping off the blackface, which could serve as a metaphor for him shedding that "revolutionary" identity. It's easy for him to do this, but for the black members involved, the situation might turn badly even when they leave the situation and fade into obscurity. The general public in this time period would very likely begin feeling threatened by other black men, fearing that they too might become terrorists, it puts the black members back in a direct line of fire, which MYB can avoid completely. Bro's just off in Mexico making explosives,  without any of his family members really knowing of his whereabouts, and it's only when he dies that the both of them are made aware, which is the nail in the coffin for this failed relationship between Father and Mother. (Or, I guess he should now be named Single Man)

So, in short. Single Man and Mother's Younger Bomber were our most ironic characters, and treated as sort of this comedic punching-bag type near the beginning. It's only due to the Coalhouse arc that they were able to pick up some of their slack and contribute to something bigger, finally being taken a bit more seriously by Doctorow as a result

Thanks for reading! Let's see how crazy Mumbo Jumbo will get...