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Chapter 8
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
Back in New Rochelle, Mother is fretting over Brother’s extended absence. She even searches his room, though she finds nothing out of place except a strange, tiny seashell. She worries about him, but there’s no one she can turn to for advice.
With their patriarch gone, Father’s family dynamic begins to spin apart. Younger Brother acts in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Mother feels this change but has no one to turn to but herself.
Themes
Mother thinks back to her childhood. Grandfather taught Greek and Latin at an Episcopal seminar in Ohio, where she and Younger Brother grew up on a charming farm. She met Father during her last year of boarding school while he was on a business trip to Cleveland, peddling his patriotic wares. After they married, he brought her (and the rest of her family) back east to New York.
Mother’s idyllic childhood and easy, predictable married life carried her through her existence without much upheaval or distress. The biggest surprise was marrying Father (a respectable businessman) instead of one of Grandfather’s students (respectable ministers all). She expected these largely predictable patterns to continue.
Themes
Now, Mother feels abandoned. Grandfather is too old, and Little Boy is too young. Mother’s charmed youth is lost, and Father is half a world away. Agitated, she retreats to her flower-filled garden. Little Boy watches her pacing there from an upstairs window. Then, she seems to hear something, and she drops to her knees and starts digging in the dirt. By the time Little Boy has made it downstairs and into the garden, Mother has freed a tiny Black newborn from the dirt of one of her flowerbeds. She rushes the baby inside and calls the doctor.
But the patterns were interrupted. In the name of progress and exploration, Father abandoned his family (temporarily) for the North Pole. This leaves Mother to discover uncharted waters, too, in the realm of the family business and in her own life. She must now make—and be responsible—for her own decisions and fate. The book builds tension by shifting abruptly from Mother’s perspective to Little Boy’s as soon as Mother enters the garden. This coyness suggests that something truly momentous is about to happen—that the discovery of the baby will usher in more than anyone could predict.
Themes
The police arrive at the house soon after the doctor does. Mother explains how she found the baby, and they fan out to search the neighborhood for the mother. Within an hour, they’ve located her and brought her to the house by ambulance. The girl (later identified as Sarah) is painfully young, and terribly upset. When Mother asks what will happen to her, the doctor answers that she will likely stand trial for attempted infanticide. In an instant, Mother offers to take responsibility for mother and child. She gives them a room on the third floor. And then she worries if she’s made the right decision. She angrily wishes Father were there to advise her lest she invite “chaos,” “misfortune,” or “contamination” into their lives.
To her credit, Mother intuitively grasps that the circumstances in the mysterious Black woman’s life must be truly dire to have led her to her desperate choice to abandon her baby. Notably, she responds with compassion (albeit compassion mixed with consternation and fear). The doctor and police officers, on the other hand, judge the woman harshly. Mother feels uncomfortable because she’s had to step up and decide herself rather than preceding down the appointed path of her life or having a man tell her what to do. She’s broken sharply with her past and begun her own transformation.
Themes
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