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Madame Crommelynck as a turning point in Jason’s adolescence

My first impression of Jason Taylor was that he was very self conscious, and edited himself so much to others, to a point that no one really knew him (this is also similar to Holden and Esther). Jason really isn’t the “type” that all the other popular kids in his class are; he writes poetry, has nerdy interests, and has a stammer that he uses his extensive vocabulary to hide. Jason’s worst fear is that any of this humiliating information about him is revealed to his class, so he does all he can to hide it and fit in. Jason is so obsessed with the social politics of his grade and is desperate to move up from his current mid-ranked “position” in his class. He recognizes classmates, like Ross Wilcox, who didn’t used to be cool, and is bewildered by how they were able to move up. Jason begins taking any chance he can get to improve his social standing with the other kids, as well as keeping up the act of hiding his stammer and unpopular interests. One example of this is in “Bridle Path”, w...
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The Nameless Family

The family of Mother, Father, Mother’s Younger Brother, and the Little Boy could arguably be considered the main characters of Ragtime . While many of the family members are less dynamic characters than someone like Coalhouse Walker, or JP Morgan, all of them stay present and central throughout the entire book. One of the most notable narrative decisions that Doctorow makes in Ragtime is leaving the main characters of the book without names. For a majority of my reading through the book, I was somewhat confused by this decision. Doctorow’s divide between who got a name and who didn’t also seemed kind of arbitrary; it didn’t have to do with who were real versus fictional characters, which is seen in the named and completely made up characters of Sarah, Willie Conklin, Coalhouse, and more. So, what was Doctorow’s intent in not giving any members of the family names, if not to distinguish his fictional characters from iconic historical figures of the early 20th century? I think that thes...
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Kindred, and Butler's unique use of a common plot device

Time travel is a pretty common motif in popular media; however, where many texts or films will use time travel to take the protagonist on fun or lighthearted adventures, Kindred uses this plot device to examine the thought experiment of how modern day people would react when truly faced with the horrors of antebellum slavery. Time travel also works very differently in Kindred than in other pieces of media, with Dana being involuntarily transported back to the past whenever her distant ancestor, Rufus, is in danger. Dana is completely powerless as to when she is transported, and she also has no control over how long she stays, with her longest experiences possibly being upwards of a week. This process is very physically and mentally taxing on Dana; she never returns unscathed. Whether it be disorientation and exhaustion, or even physical injuries, like her lost arm. All of this is to say that in Kindred, time travel is especially harsh, and meant to reflect the brutality of slavery and ...
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