Previous
Chapter 3
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ragtime, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The American Dream
Replication and Transformation
Freedom, Human Dignity, and Justice
The Cult of Celebrity
Women’s Roles
Social Inequities
Summary
Analysis
That summer, political candidates woo potential voters with trips to the countryside. One treats his supporters to a picnic and fireworks choreographed by Mother’s Younger Brother. Afterward, Younger Brother slips onto the steamer boat carrying the voters back to the city, dreaming of Evelyn Nesbit.
The political rallies use access to the cooler, cleaner areas outside of New York City as political capital. It seems that elections in this era are decided not on the issues but by how much money the candidates choose to lavish on their constituents—and political changes to improve democracy were among the Progressive Era’s achievements.
Themes
Evelyn Nesbit spends the hot, borings summer days memorizing her testimony for Thaw’s murder trial. The defense plans to claim that he went temporarily out of his mind when he learned of how Stanford White once drugged and raped the teenage Evelyn. It’s a lie— Thaw has a long history of strange and violent behavior. On a European vacation while he was courting Evelyn, he savagely whipped and raped her. When she returned to New York, White helped her prepare an affidavit concerning Thaw’s behavior. The very wealthy Thaw married her to keep her quiet.
The book’s focus shifts now to Evelyn Nesbit, who rose from poverty and obscurity to wealth and notoriety on the strength of her beauty and sex appeal. In a way, then, she successfully achieved the American Dream of wealth and success. But even this brief description of White’s and Thaw’s sexual violence raises the question of whether Nesbit’s success has been worth it.
Themes
Harry Thaw spends his days in a New York City jail called the Tombs. He has meals, fresh clothes, and at least six newspapers delivered to him daily. For these and other privileges—like being allowed to walk privately with Evelyn on her daily visits—he generously bribes the guards. To the reporters who wait for her daily outside the jail, Evelyn insists on her husband’s innocence, although she is only saying so to earn the $200,000 Thaw promised for her testimony.
Wealth generates inequities and injustices. Even in jail, Thaw’s life is vastly better than Mameh’s, Tateh’s, and Little Girl’s because his family can afford to send him luxuries. And he uses his money to bribe the guards. Money even buys him a better criminal defense in the form of Evelyn’s coached testimony.
Themes
In this same summer, American novelist Theodore Dreiser arrives in Brooklyn, despondent over the lackluster sales of his novel, Sister Carrie. He rents furnished rooms. He likes to sit in a chair in the middle of one room. One day, he decides it’s facing the wrong way, and he spends hours trying to align it. He never succeeds.
Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie follows a girl from the country who moves to New York and conducts a series of affairs with successively wealthier and wealthier men until she ultimately finds success—but not happiness—on her own terms as an actress. By invoking this novel, Ragtime reinforces its own questions about the American Dream. Dreiser’s inability to find the right angle here unsubtly hints at the impossibility of the American Dream’s ideals.
Themes
Get the entire Ragtime LitChart as a printable PDF.
