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Chapter 31
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
As for Younger Brother, the family doesn’t think too much about his sudden absence, because he’s always been odd. But a few days after the attack on the firehouse, he goes back to Harlem and leaves word at the funeral parlor that arranged Sarah’s service that he wants to talk to Coalhouse and that he will wait, nightly, by the Manhattan Casino Theater for him. On the fourth night, a well-dressed Black youth asks him for some change. On the fifth, another well-dressed Black youth leads him to Coalhouse.
Younger Brother’s radicalization hasn’t been a focus of the book, but after his last encounter with Emma Goldman, it was pretty clear that he was a revolutionary looking for a cause, and his anger at Father (who represents established society) in the wake of the injustices directed at Coalhouse pretty clearly suggested what that cause would be. His Harlem stakeout proves that he’s serious both to himself and to Coalhouse.
Themes
Coalhouse Walker Jr. asks Younger Brother what he wants, and Younger Brother forgets his eloquent speech about justice and human dignity. Instead, he blurts out, “I can make bombs.” In his diary, he records the specifics of his life with Coalhouse’s crew. They pool resources and share responsibilities. They all respect and emulate Coalhouse, even going so far as to dress like him. They anticipate their deaths as martyrs to a greater cause. Younger Brother makes the bombs and drives the getaway cars. He is there (disguised in blackface) on the day of the second firehouse attack. When the papers print stories about Conklin’s flight and the Model T’s rescue from the pond, they feel empowered.
Younger Brother’s ineloquence shows the power of his feelings. And it suggests what’s necessary, from the novel’s point of view, to create change. If fancy speeches and appeals to ideals worked, generations of abolitionists would have succeeded in ending slavery without the Civil War and American society would have accepted free Black people without the decades of Jim Crow segregation leading up to the (sometimes violent) political action of the Civil Rights Era. In this vein, aspects of Coalhouse’s band echo militant Black rights organizations, like the Black Panthers, which were founded during the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 60s.
Themes
