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Chapter 28
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
In the wake of Coalhouse’s attack, Father feels painfully powerless. It’s a feeling he remembers from earlier in life when his father, who had become rich during the Civil War, lost his fortune in questionable business deals. Father’s charmed upper-class upbringing came to an abrupt halt when he was halfway through a degree in German Philosophy at Harvard. He had to drop out and start again from scratch. And he was successful in turning a small investment in a fireworks company into his flourishing trade. He built a nice house and explored the world. But now he’s starting to feel depleted and washed up. He isn’t sure if his initial dislike of Coalhouse was because the man is Black or because he still has the best years of his life ahead of him, unlike Father.
Father worked hard to rebuild wealth and success after his own father’s business mistakes, and he deserves to feel proud of his accomplishments. But he casts himself as a completely self-made man when he isn’t. He started life with wealth, privilege, and opportunity that others didn’t have. Even the money he used to invest in the fireworks business—small though it may have been—came from his father. In contrast, someone like Coalhouse has had to work his way up from the bottom, and thus his success belongs to himself alone. Father comes close to but can’t quite fully acknowledge how much of his dislike grows from personal jealousy rather than racism.
Themes
Father feels his increasing age keenly. He notices wrinkles and age spots when he looks in the mirror. He no longer lusts after Mother and has started to resent her for the attention she lavishes on the baby. Because he’s aware of his resentments toward Mother, Coalhouse, and the baby, he tries to make up for them by not only offering the police Coalhouse’s identity but for trying to illuminate his motives. The police don’t care—they already had the letter, and anyway, they only want to know how likely another attack is. Given Coalhouse’s persistence, Father says, another attack is highly likely.
In his quest to reassert his own position in society (even if only to assuage his personal sense of fading importance), Father imposes himself on the investigation. But even in this, he's already been rendered redundant. Coalhouse has even denied him the pleasure of uncovering a criminal to the attention of the authorities. Father is relegated to a supporting role once again, an abrupt and unappreciated reminder that society is changing—and he’s being left behind.
Themes
The police make it clear they expect Father’s help (and they begin to surveil the house) so he feels pressured into spending more time than he’d like at the station, where he’s forced to rub shoulders with Will Conklin. Father dislikes Conklin for both personal and social reasons. Personally, Conklin is cowardly and self-important, he doesn’t take responsibility for his behavior toward Coalhouse, and tries to ingratiate himself with the police Father. He’s also Irish and working class. Public opinion turns against him, too, as details of the story begin to get out. Some people focus on how he needlessly bullied Coalhouse and put his own men in danger; others wonder why he started putting an arrogant Black man in place but failed to finish the job.
Conklin is an objectionable human being. He cares more about saving his own skin than about the men who lost their lives in Coalhouse’s attack—an attack that he himself provoked. Readers should note how personal assessments of Conklin get tangled up with racial and social tensions. In part, it’s easy for Father to dislike Conklin because of his upwardly mobile aspirations just as it’s easier for others in the community to write him off because he’s obviously coded as Irish American rather than just American.
Themes
One week after the first attack, Coalhouse and several associates attack a second firehouse. The fire kindled by their explosives destroys two adjacent businesses, and the attack leaves six people—a police officer, four firefighters, and an older female bystander—dead. Coalhouse leaves another letter outlining his demands, which he signs “Coalhouse Walker Jr., President, Provisional American Government.” Panic and outrage erupt all over the city. People condemn the police for failing to catch Coalhouse. The police point out that he's getting around by car, but until state laws require cars and drivers to be licensed, it’s almost impossible to trace them. Black people barricade themselves at home, fearing racial violence. White vigilantes begin to prowl the streets. The governor of the state sends the militia to help maintain order.
When Coalhouse’s initial demands go unheeded, he escalates his attack, and he signs his second letter in a way that makes it clear he doesn’t just see his actions as part of a quest for individual retribution: he also sees them as a way to force social change. This isn’t just about his car: it’s about his human dignity being trampled, his rights being ignored, and Black people in American in general being oppressed and marginalized. Again, the book doesn’t explicitly condone Coalhouse’s violent tactics. But it does make it very, very clear that they work. Coalhouse takes command of the narrative and refuses to let the public lose sight of his grievances or demands.
Themes
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The newspapers turn up what they can about Coalhouse Walker Jr., including a photograph of him taken years earlier when he was performing with a band in St. Louis. When the press discovers the family’s role in the drama, they start pounding on the door and camping out in the front yard. They criticize Mother for sheltering Coalhouse’s baby, calling for her to turn him over to any one of the city’s “excellent asylums” for orphaned and abandoned babies. The family can’t function. Father must hire domestic staff to help.
Father was happy to help the police when his name was kept out of the whole sordid affair, but things change when the family comes to the public’s attention. Now they run the risk of running afoul of public opinion. Change has costs. Mainstream society criticizes Mother’s decision to shelter and care for the baby, a choice she made from empathy. Their lack of understanding suggests an inability to consider Black people as members of humankind deserving dignity and kindness.
Themes
Despite his financial success and his audacious explorations, Father feels helpless. He begins to regret his negligence toward his family members—his patronizing attitude toward Grandfather; the distance he’s allowed to grow between himself fand Younger Brother; his disinterest and lack of participation in Little Boy’s upbringing. When he learns about his son’s interest in baseball, he decides they will go together to a game.
Father’s sense of importance and mastery was based more on his privilege and on financial success. Now, he’s discovering the emptiness of these measures of success. Belatedly, he turns to the people around him, but readers shouldn’t expect this to go well, because his family have managed to transform themselves with the changing times in ways he hasn’t.
Themes
