At the end of Ragtime, we get this conclusion of what
happens to all the characters. We find out that Mother and Father divorce and
that Mother gets married to Tateh. We discover the endings to Emma Goldman and
Evelyn Nesbit. In the finale chapter, Doctorow doesn’t hold back, and just hits
us with all these blunt statements of what happens to all the characters that
we met throughout his book. Yet, the ending still seems almost unsatisfactory.
To be
honest, I kind of disliked the ending. After having read so many fiction
stories, I kind of almost expected like a fairy tale ending where there was
either a cliffhanger ending that gives readers something to dwell on, or even
an ending where everyone lived happily ever after. Instead, we get statements
like “The anarchist Emma Goldman had been deported. The beautiful and
passionate Evelyn Nesbit had lost her looks and fallen into obscurity”
(Doctorow 320). Everything just seemed so bland like it doesn’t really matter
what happens to the characters. In a way, that’s kind of true.
This is
because Doctorow tries make the book seem realistic. He wants the ending to be representative
of history. In real life, people don’t end up having these fantastical endings
that everyone thinks they have. For example, after the American Revolution and
presidency, George Washington didn’t go on some new adventure. Instead, retired
to his plantation to live out the rest of his life. Nobody really cares about
Washington in his post-presidency. Life just moves on. The same happens in
Ragtime. Doctorow doesn’t end on a high note. Instead, he makes the book seem realistic
by making the characters almost ordinary in their endings. It gives the
illusion that the book itself isn’t really a work of fiction, but rather a
series of chapters in someone’s life.
