Ragtime

by

E. L. Doctorow

Harry Houdini is a historical character whose life intersects very briefly with Mother’s, Father’s, and Little Boy’s when his chauffeur-driven car crashes into a utility pole near their house. He also encounters some of the wealthier Americans of the era, including Harry K. Thaw (whom he meets while performing an escape stunt at the jail where Thaw awaits his murder trial) and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish (who hires him to perform at a party alongside sideshow performer Lavinia Warren Thumb). Houdini is a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe who arrives in America as a small child. He rises above his humble origins with a career in show business, first as a magician and later as an escape artist. By the early 1900s, Houdini has achieved considerable success in American show business with his increasingly dramatic and impressive escapes. Still, it irks him that he can achieve fame and wealthy but not earn the respect of the wealthy and elite realms of society. It’s somewhat different in Europe, where Houdini becomes interested in flying and rubs elbows with some of the continent’s most important people, like Archduke Franz Ferdinand. After the death of his mother, Houdini initially becomes despondent. He later develops an interest in debunking spiritualists in his quest to find a true medium who will allow him to contact his mother in the afterlife. This marks an important shift in his career, although he continues to perform escapes up until the end.

Harry Houdini Quotes in Ragtime

The Ragtime quotes below are all either spoken by Harry Houdini or refer to Harry Houdini. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The American Dream Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

[Little Boy] felt that the circumstances of his family’s life operated against his need to see things and go places. For instance he had conceived an enormous interest in the works and career of Harry Houdini, the escape artist. But he had not been taken to a performance. Houdini was a headliner in the top vaudeville circuits. His audiences were poor people—carriers, peddlers, policemen, children. His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a strait jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped. He escaped form bank vaults, nailed-up barrels, sewn mailbags; he escaped from a zinc-lined Knabe piano case, a giant football, […] a rolltop desk, a sausage skin.

Related Characters: Father, Mother’s Younger Brother, Harry Houdini, Mother, Little Boy, Grandfather
Page Number: 6-7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

The prisoner was sitting at a table laid with linen and service. On the table were the remains of a large meal. An empty bottle of champagne was stuck upside down in a cooler. The iron cot was covered with a quilted spread and throw pillows. A Regency armoire stood against the stone wall. The ceiling fixture had been ornamented with a Tiffany lampshade. Houdini could not help staring. The prisoner’s cell glowed like a stage in the perpetual dusk of the cavernous prison. The prisoner stood up and waved, a stately gesture, and his wide mouth offered the trace of a smile.

Related Characters: Harry Houdini, Harry K. Thaw, Stanford White
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Houdini walked through the streets. His ears burned with humiliation. He wore a hat with the brim turned down. He wore a tight-fitting double-breasted linen jacket and he kept his hands in the pockets of the jacket. He wore tan trousers and brown and white shoes with pointed toes. It was a chilly autumn afternoon and most people wore coats. He moved swiftly through the crowded New York streets. He was incredibly lithe. There was a kind of act that used the real world for its stage. He couldn’t touch it. For all his achievements, he was a trickster, an illusionist, a mere magician. What was the sense of his life if people walked out of the theater and forgot him? The headlines on the newsstand said Peary had reached the Pole. The real-world act was what got into the history books.

Related Characters: Tateh (Baron Ashkenazy), Harry Houdini, Robert Peary
Page Number: 98-99
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

[Morgan] heard from a native guide of the wisdom given to the great Osiris that there is a sacred tribe of heroes, a colony from the gods who are regularly born in every age to assist mankind. The idea stunned him. The more he thought about it the more palpably he felt it. It was upon his return to America that he began to think about Henry Ford. He had no illusions that Ford was a gentleman. He recognized him for a shrewd provincial, as uneducated as a piece of wood. But he thought he saw in Ford’s use of men a reincarnation of pharaohism. Not only that: he had studied photographs of the automobile manufacturer and had seen an extraordinary resemblance to Seti I, the father of the great Ramses and the best-preserved mummy to have been unearthed from the necropolis of Thebes in the Valley of the Kings.

Related Characters: Harry Houdini, John Pierpont Morgan , Henry Ford, Jacob Riis
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Ragtime LitChart as a printable PDF.
Ragtime PDF

Harry Houdini Quotes in Ragtime

The Ragtime quotes below are all either spoken by Harry Houdini or refer to Harry Houdini. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The American Dream Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1  Quotes

[Little Boy] felt that the circumstances of his family’s life operated against his need to see things and go places. For instance he had conceived an enormous interest in the works and career of Harry Houdini, the escape artist. But he had not been taken to a performance. Houdini was a headliner in the top vaudeville circuits. His audiences were poor people—carriers, peddlers, policemen, children. His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a strait jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped. He escaped form bank vaults, nailed-up barrels, sewn mailbags; he escaped from a zinc-lined Knabe piano case, a giant football, […] a rolltop desk, a sausage skin.

Related Characters: Father, Mother’s Younger Brother, Harry Houdini, Mother, Little Boy, Grandfather
Page Number: 6-7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

The prisoner was sitting at a table laid with linen and service. On the table were the remains of a large meal. An empty bottle of champagne was stuck upside down in a cooler. The iron cot was covered with a quilted spread and throw pillows. A Regency armoire stood against the stone wall. The ceiling fixture had been ornamented with a Tiffany lampshade. Houdini could not help staring. The prisoner’s cell glowed like a stage in the perpetual dusk of the cavernous prison. The prisoner stood up and waved, a stately gesture, and his wide mouth offered the trace of a smile.

Related Characters: Harry Houdini, Harry K. Thaw, Stanford White
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Houdini walked through the streets. His ears burned with humiliation. He wore a hat with the brim turned down. He wore a tight-fitting double-breasted linen jacket and he kept his hands in the pockets of the jacket. He wore tan trousers and brown and white shoes with pointed toes. It was a chilly autumn afternoon and most people wore coats. He moved swiftly through the crowded New York streets. He was incredibly lithe. There was a kind of act that used the real world for its stage. He couldn’t touch it. For all his achievements, he was a trickster, an illusionist, a mere magician. What was the sense of his life if people walked out of the theater and forgot him? The headlines on the newsstand said Peary had reached the Pole. The real-world act was what got into the history books.

Related Characters: Tateh (Baron Ashkenazy), Harry Houdini, Robert Peary
Page Number: 98-99
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

[Morgan] heard from a native guide of the wisdom given to the great Osiris that there is a sacred tribe of heroes, a colony from the gods who are regularly born in every age to assist mankind. The idea stunned him. The more he thought about it the more palpably he felt it. It was upon his return to America that he began to think about Henry Ford. He had no illusions that Ford was a gentleman. He recognized him for a shrewd provincial, as uneducated as a piece of wood. But he thought he saw in Ford’s use of men a reincarnation of pharaohism. Not only that: he had studied photographs of the automobile manufacturer and had seen an extraordinary resemblance to Seti I, the father of the great Ramses and the best-preserved mummy to have been unearthed from the necropolis of Thebes in the Valley of the Kings.

Related Characters: Harry Houdini, John Pierpont Morgan , Henry Ford, Jacob Riis
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis: