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 these family members could have been left nameless because each of them are not individual characters, but archetypes of “classic” figures in the American middle class of the 1900s. I think it’s meant to send a message that it doesn’t really matter that these characters weren’t real, because they could’ve been anyone. Father, for example, is shown as a stern, traditional, somewhat conservative middle class man who struggles to adapt to changing times. Even though Father does unique things that should separate him from this broader stereotype, like his voyage to Antarctica, or his negotiations inside JP Morgan’s bomb-filled museum, Father’s character and attitude never really shift. A defining characteristic of these nameless family members seems to be that they don’t really have any evolution, and throughout their endeavors, they stay representing the same archetypes as they did in the beginning. Mother is a more modern and understanding figure who becomes increasingly dissatisfied with her marriage. Mother’s Younger Brother is rebellious, anxious, and desperately searching for meaning. Removing these characters’ identities turns their purpose more into the role they play in society, rather than who they actually are.

However, the one exception to my argument that I couldn’t stop thinking about while writing this is Tateh. Tateh isn’t a real name, it translates to “Father” in Yiddish, so Tateh, Mameh, and The Little Girl are just another family of nameless characters. Tateh is confusing, because he seems to break these ‘rules’ I’ve set for how the nameless characters should behave. From the start, it’s hard to pin Tateh down as a specific trope, or as an archetype of a broader population. Tateh is a socialist, and despite Emma Goldman being an anarchist, he goes to her talks, and agrees with much of what she has to say, even with her being vocal about sexuality, as seen in her confrontation with Evelyn Nesbitt. This feels contradictory with how Tateh left Mameh for being sexually assaulted, because he saw it as bringing shame to their family. I’m trying to make the point that Tateh’s complex balance between very progressive politics, and very traditional ones makes it hard to identify him as a specific archetype; he seems very unique. It becomes even harder to fit Tateh into what one of the nameless characters should be, when he gets rich off his flipbooks, becomes Baron Ashkenazy, and eventually moves away to California, to exploit capitalism  as a film director.

I’m not really sure what my conclusion to this is; I just thought it was interesting how the nameless characters of the New Rochelle family seemed like such monolithic characters that, if not for the bizarre events of the book, could have been practically anyone. Meanwhile, the nameless character, Tateh, has such contradicting politics, and evolves from a poor, socialist activist in the slums of New York, to a rich filmmaker in California. So I guess I didn’t fully figure it out, but I’m still interested in finding if there's some broader significance behind the two nameless families, and why they’re so different. 

-Sahnan