History as Fiction and Fiction as History: Reading Doctorow's Ragtime

Abstract

Edgar Lawerence Doctrow'sRagtime(1975) is a novel which ironizes racismat the turn-of-the century inAmerica. The racial discrimination between thewhites and theblacks has been explained through the resistance tovandalization of Model T Ford of the colored man,CoalhouseWalker bythewhites. The black people are brutally oppressed and exploited by thewhites. Coalhouse Walker revolts against whites' oppression. In the novel Ragtime, Doctorow has patterned the revolt of Coalhouse Walker after the Civil RightsMovement of the1960s in America. The study highlights a reconditioning of traditional historiography through Doctorow's writing back of the history of black radicalism in the history of the Ragtime Era(1900-1920s). Doctorow has written the history of theRagtime Era in fictional form by highlighting thecontemporary marginal issues through revisionist perspective.The way Doctorow highlights the issue of marginalization ruptures the grand narrative of the Ragtime Era.