Getting at the Deeper Meaning of ‘Ragtime’

In her review of “Ragtime,” The Times’ theater critic Laurie Winer aptly summarizes the importance of the musical when she confers on it “the rare distinction of being timely, even as it promises to be timeless” (“An American Dream,” Calendar, June 17). However, this essential quality of “timelessness” is understood even more clearly by those who interpretthe production in the context of E.L. Doctorow’s novel.

The musical, though stunning, must present, within the spatial and temporal constraints of the stage, Doctorow’s epic vision of an America whose entire history is steeped in violence and discrimination of all kinds. Thus I feel compelled to respond to the negative remarks of Anthony Scully (“Anti-Irish Bias Taints ‘Ragtime,’ ” Counterpunch, June 23, and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Warren, Calendar letters, July 6).

Scully, “as a person of Irish ancestry,” takes strong exception to the fact that the perpetrators of the violence against Coalhouse Walker Jr. are unambiguously defined as Irish. I proudly claim my one-quarter Irish heritage, but, as even Scully concedes, there are “stupid, bigoted” people of every ethnic heritage, including Irish.

Why should these characters not be the ones who desecrate Coalhouse’s car? Why should the audience not be given credit for their ability to see these “Neanderthals,” as Scully calls them, as representatives of idiots and bigots of every stripe and heritage, not merely as Irish bigots?

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As a thinking reader and theatergoer, I am concerned that people have so little faith in the human powers of critical thinking that they would take such serious offense at what is simply a literary characterization.

Do all African Americans fear being characterized as terrorist antiheroes because of the depiction of Coalhouse? Do all middle-class WASP fathers fear being characterized as suburban wimps because the production depicts a wife who proves herself a superior businesswoman when her husband goes off exploring? I suppose we shall next be hearing from Gen-Xers who object to the alienation and misguided idealism of Mother’s Younger Brother, a character so obviously designed to incur the audience’s disdain for the ennui of twentysomethings.

This admittedly satirical exaggeration demonstrates a disturbing contemporary problem: In an age of hypersensitivity and political correctness, discrimination and bigotry are readily sought, easily found, sometimes imagined and sometimes tragically real. If we allow our personal objections to the actions of a particular character to overwhelm our appreciation for the production’s more comprehensive and universal themes of injustice, marginalizing visionary power and the courage of having convictions, then we are wasting our time and the price of our theater tickets.

Similarly, I am compelled to challenge the Warrens’ analogy between Coalhouse and Timothy McVeigh, lest others be led to believe that Doctorow and the producers of “Ragtime” have intentionally “lionized and glamorized” a domestic terrorist, presumably a sort of Victorian McVeigh.

For one thing, before taking matters into his own hands, Coalhouse had assiduously sought redress of his grievance through every legitimate avenue he could find. It was only after he was foiled in his sincere efforts to seek justice through the duly established legal system, and after he lost his beloved Sarah, that Coalhouse broke faith with the society that had betrayed him. Whatever McVeigh’s gripes with the government may be, I am not aware that he attempted to redress them through any legal or socially acceptable means before he blew up the Murrah building.

In addition, this comparison of Coalhouse with McVeigh overlooks the very real and personal racism that provoked the attack on Coalhouse’s car and eventually led to the death of his fiancee, leaving his child motherless and his life meaningless and embittered. McVeigh, a white, middle-class young man with a military background and the option to shape his future in virtually any way he chose, can hardly be compared to a disenfranchised black man at the turn of the century when such options were few. In fact, as their similarly vague motives suggest, the character most comparable to McVeigh is not Coalhouse but Mother’s Younger Brother, who died as pathetically as he lived: alone, alienated, still searching for a cause, any cause, that would give his life meaning.

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Finally, the most critical distinction between the two men, and the one most disturbingly overlooked in making this particular comparison: Coalhouse is a fictional character, while McVeigh and his ilk are all too real. The 168 people who died at the Murrah building are not resurrected to take curtain calls with the cast of “Ragtime.” To compare a real-life convicted mass murderer to a literary character who is, in fact, very different from the man whose impersonal (and by some accounts paranoid) political agenda propelled him to terrorism is to undermine the memory of the Murrah bombing victims.

In Doctorow’s novel, bigotry, injustice, and violence against the innocent are complex and tragic issues that cannot be explained by questionable comparisons or a disproportionate focus on a single group of characters as depicted in the musical “Ragtime.”

Those planning to attend this moving and provocative production should be aware that it powerfully but not completely conveys the scope and depth of the novel’s themes. Those who are able to interpret the production in context of Doctorow’s work will be rewarded with a profound understanding of the musical’s most enduring message: We can, indeed, hope for a better future when we are carried on “The Wheels of a Dream.”